


Do Not Forget Us As We Are

by semaphore27



Series: Götterdämmerung 24/7 [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), FrostIron Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Heavy Angst, Intersex Loki, Language, Loki Angst, Loki Feels, Loki's Kids, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Past rape/noncon, Physical Abuse, Protective Kurt, Protective Thor, Protective Tony Stark, SHIELD, Sick Loki, Thor Feels, Tony Angst, Tony Feels, Tony Has Issues, Verbal Abuse, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-05 10:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14615994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: Loki and his children were instrumental in defeating Baldr, Victor von Doom, and Stefan Szardos, however, as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. is concerned, Loki's still just the war criminal who attacked New York two years before. They also aren't willing to take any chances where the kids are concerned. Although Kurt is able to spirit the children away before they're taken into custody, Loki is in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hands and many there believe punishment is long overdue. Will Tony be able to free him before it's too late?Did I mention HEAVY ANGST?





	1. Capture

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the presenting such an unlikable picture of S.H.I.E.L.D. I made a point of not naming any specific agents who might be known and loved by my readers (we'll assume all the bad guys are folks we've never seen or heard of). I'm sure the good agents think the ones in this story are total jerks and won't sit by them in the break room or let them on the softball team. 
> 
> Please be forewarned that Loki is having a _terribly_ hard time in this fic, which may not be acceptable for those who dislike major sadness in a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the movie _The Sound of Music_ the von Trapp family did indeed have to cross the Alps. The real life family only had to cross the railroad tracks behind their villa, but that's not exactly the stuff of iconic finales,

* * *

_Kurt, soon as you may!_

Wrecked as he looked, as he actually was physically, Loki’s voice rang in Tony's head, controlled and confident, the voice Tony had come to recognize as the god's Prince Voice, meant to marshal the troops. Which in this case equaled Tony and Kurt.

_Received loud and clear_ , Kurt answered, in his own Fearless Soldier voice.

The two of them broke his heart, they really did.  Personally, Tony felt numb.  His head spun, and he felt incapable of reacting to any thing in any way.

Seconds ago he'd held Loki in his arms, Loki's inhumanly soft skin against his skin, his voice murmuring loving words in Tony's ear. Everything had seemed, not merely okay, but blissful, as if the bad times had been left behind forever. The two of them had felt completely inseparable.

Then a big load of " _that was then, this is now_ " smacked Tony right in the face: S.H.I.E.L.D arrived to save the fucking day.

Yay.

Fuck Nat--apparently the clever idiot who called in the cavalry--and her goddamned fucking bright ideas. To hell with her good intentions.

He'd been happy, he'd been safe and now he _so_ wasn't.

_Okay_ , Tony thought, _This is what it feels like losing everything, watching it all melt away and not a damn word I can say to put things right again._

And did his teammates let out a peep in Loki's defense, no matter how totally appropriate a chorus of, " _Loki is actually the reason we're alive and free today, give him a break_ ," might have been? Hell, no.  Not a single one of those chickenshits was going to acknowledge his beloved trickster as the hero of the piece, even with a couple actual villains dead in the castle and arch-villain Doctor Doom sleeping it off upstairs.

Nobody present (and this Tony could kinda-sorta understand) wanted to mix it up with even a passed-out-drunk von Doom on a simple extraction mission. That was too much like work.

Much better to make themselves feel good by picking on the alien, the guy who'd already lost his powers defending them, who'd been tortured and starved to within an inch of his life and couldn't hurt them. That was playing fair.

Some fucking rescue this turned out to be. Tony would rather have hitchhiked his way across Europe to the coast of France, carrying Loki all the way on his back, than have gotten mixed up in this mess. He'd even rather have crossed the Alps (was that the Alps in _The Sound of Music?_ ) singing showtunes, with the kids dressed in clothes he'd personally hand-sewn from Doctor Doom's living room drapes than this extreme fuckitude.

Yet another fine example of the extreme suckage of S.H.I.E.L.D. bureaucracy--all the more so because it wasn't just Loki they threatened, they probably also planned to scoop up his sweet kids, just because they were Loki's. Just because they were a little different from the run-of-the-mill.

It didn't matter at all that those children were completely innocent, that they were kind and loving and loyal, that they'd done no one any harm (okay, except for the situation with Baldr and Fen, but A) Baldr had already been pushing up daisies, and B) anyone who'd ever met the bastard would have totally understood and made an exception for that one). That they _meant_ no one any harm.

They were the children of Loki, and that's all that mattered to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Tony flashed back to Central Park, to Loki, still as far as he knew his sworn enemy, begging him to save his kids from vivisection. Tony's stomach rolled over; sometimes he hated the world. He hated more knowing, as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. (not Coulson, necessarily, but others) happened to be concerned, the v-word wouldn't necessarily be off the table.

Because adorable Jӧri, Fen and Hela weren't _human_ kids, after all.

Tony crouched down between Jӧr and Hela, holding their small hands tight in his own.

_Be ready for Uncle Kurt,_ he told them. _I’ll help your_ Pabbi _as soon as I can, and we’ll all be together then, but for now Kurt can get you to a safe place faster than I’d be able to, and Kurt’s boyfriend, Logan, is the toughest dude in the whole world, okay? Even the worst, worst bad guys are scared of him. He and Kurt will take good care of you. You know how much I love you, right? I love you more than science itself. I hope you’re impressed._

_Please, Kurt. Please, Kurt. Please_ , Tony pleaded inside his head. _You have to get this right. You have to save them._

Jöri giggled a little, inwardly, our of sheer nerves. He had these second eyelids, transparent and tinted red, that slipped over his eyes when the light was too bright, or when he was anxious--left to right, right to left. They slipped across now, turning his eyes from green to purplish and back again. The little blue tips of his tongue poked out between his lips.

Hela, on the other hand, stood utterly still, utterly erect, radiating an icy fury. She looked about two seconds away from going full-on _Valkyrja_ on somebody’s ass.

At the same time Tony felt the warmth, the tenderness, of her, and of Jöri, both of them--oh, gods, so sweet--sending toward him, toward Loki, toward Kurt, the same kindness and love flooding back from the god and the mutant. For a moment, then, they were a family again, as Tony almost hadn’t realized they’d somehow become, back in that overheated deathtrap of a cell, aboard the fauxlicarrier.

It came as just a little bit of a shock—unexpected, to say the very least. He’d always thought of himself as the very last person on earth who would (or maybe _should_ have a family). Yet here they were, so damn weird, so completely perfect.

Hela turned her face toward Tony’s, her beautiful eyes like fierce green flames. _They will try to turn us to monsters in your heart, most worthy-of-sagas Uncle Tony_. Her clear voice rang, bright as ice, in his head. _Do not forget us as we are, do not allow them to corrupt our love and make it a lesser thing in your eyes than what it is. I utter no curse, honestly I do not, but if you let this love of ours die by your neglect, if you lose us by their lies, never will you know love again._

_Oh, Empress…_ Tony stroked her abundant dark hair, thinking of how he loved her, honestly loved her, thinking again of how Loki’s hair had felt in his hands, how Loki’s body had curved sweetly into his and how he’d felt, for once, cared for, and at peace—and how he’d felt in return--with his mind closely touching the god’s mind--that Loki felt, in his own special convoluted alien way, cared for, and at peace, too.

That kind of love, when you lost it, wrecked you and turned you inside out.  If Tony fought for it, though, if he never gave up, maybe it wasn't totally ridiculous to think he might be able to rebuild?

He'd never believed in soul-changing love (or souls, period, for that matter). He thought he'd liked his life just fine the way it was before. If one person in the universe didn't believe in the existence of life-changing love, that person was Tony Stark.

Ha! said the universe.

Tony knew he had to let the kids go, had to let Kurt take them away from this crazy place and these agents--because one thing he’d come to understand about S.H.I.E.LD. was that the purity of their actions tended to be... debatable.  As in, whatever awful shit he imagined them getting up to , in their super-secret headquarters, they'd probably be capable of worse.  He was at least ninety per cent positive the legit S.H.I.E.L.D. had showed up to "save" the day this time, not Baldr's Hydra-reminiscent duplicate.

Meaning, real or not, that Tony would trust them just about as far as he could throw them while not wearing the suit. On a bad day. When he had a hangover. And two broken arms and legs.

If he’d only had one of his goddamn suits right now, he’d have blasted every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in the place to strawberry jelly, rather than let his new family out of his sight. He'd have lived under an assumed name on a distant mountain in Nepal eating nothing but snow and yak-yogurt until the end of his days. For all he knew, yak-yogurt was one of the things Loki could actually fucking eat.

_Do nothing foolish, Tony_ , Loki commanded. _Release the children when you can. Commit no deeds of rashness or violence to save me. As I am certain you know, an act of diplomacy, blackmail or bribery in such cases is nearly always efficacious._

_Ah, there’s my Prince Loki. Bet you took those lessons in with your mother’s milk, huh?_

_I was nurtured by a goat named Adelheid,_ Loki sent. His torn lips twitched. _She was surprisingly unskilled in matters political._

_It’s an expression, smartass._

_That I know, foolish beloved._ Loki pulled himself upright to his full height, though the effort drained him of color to whiter-than-Hela levels. Even battered and emaciated, he looked every inch the prince.

_They bring the chains, my heart. Try not to look. Please, I beg of you, do not allow the children to see. Be as brave as you can, Tony, and as patient._

Kurt broke in softly. _If I see my chance, I’ll try to take the little ones before they bind you,_ lieber Freund.

_I can’t stand this! I love you, I love you!_ Tony found himself crying out desperately, in the moment before Kurt flung himself from completely, invisibly hidden up in the rafters to epic-series-of-lightning-fast-teleportations-meets-beyond-Olympic-standard-gymnastics, so fast that even Tony, who knew exactly what was happening, more or less, couldn’t for the life of him follow what happened, only that sulfur and bursts of dazzling flashes of light filled the air, and guns (tailsmacked, no doubt) flew out of agents’ hands--and then three beautiful children disappeared.

In the blink of an eye. Just like magic.

Maybe it was magic. It was certainly one of the most goddamn amazing things Tony had ever witnessed.

Loki smiled, just a little, with his torn mouth and exhausted, bloodshot eyes, even as his arms were wrenched behind him and encased in the adamantium restraints. He never cried out, as much as the pain showed in the lines of his face.

_Quite the adventure_ , said Loki's cool, snarky voice in Tony’s head--then, in an altogether different voice, the voice of the guy Tony was pretty much convinced he really had already fallen in love with, _They will be safe, Tony. Kurt will allow no harm to come to them. My children can alter their forms in any way required. Even Kurt possesses the shapeshifter device you so cunningly created in your earlier years_ , kærust minn. _They will be safe._

Tony could have wept at the undiluted sorrow inside the god’s head, even as Loki tried to reassure him.

And Loki had called him _“my heart_ ” in SpaceViking.

Tony's actual heart felt like it was bleeding.

_It isn’t right, Lok!_ The worldly cynic in Tony’s own head cringed that he’d even be capable of such a statement—since when was life fair, in the history of ever?

_I’ll do anything I can, babe. Anything._

_I know_ , Loki sent. _I know you will, Tony._ He shuddered violently as agents began to fit the muzzle over his mouth.

_I am afraid!_ Loki cried out suddenly, desperately. _Not of the pain, that I can brave. But, Tony, if they put me to the loneliness again, as I knew in Asgard, as I knew here…_

“Try…” Steve began. His voice ( because eternally a decent guy, he had to know something wrong and awful was about to take place) cracked badly. “Please, agents, try to be gentle. That man is injured.”

“Eh. He’s not a man, Captain. These guys heal,” answered a squatty agent with a shaved head, as he bolted the muzzle around Loki's head.

Tony didn’t know the agent's name; he didn’t want to. He’d just call him Baldy.

Agent Baldy tightened the hideous piece of hardware further, jerking Loki’s head back brutally. The god's knees buckled and he nearly went down, but caught himself, staying on his feet by pride alone, Tony guessed. His eyes were glazed, his skin actually whiter now than Hela's, which once might have seemed beyond the realm of possibility.

_Loki, will I be able to reach you? Like this, I mean? If you are alone, can we still talk? Because, the thing is—and this may sound kind of weird…_ Tony sent. _I may have sort of accidentally fallen a little bit in love with you._

_An honest mistake_ , Loki answered, faux-flippant, still trying to make it all easier on Tony. _Perfectly understandable._

_I know. I’m an idiot._

_**My** idiot_ , the god responded, _My beloved idiot_. Hjarta hjarta mínn. _Heart of my heart._

_Oh, gods, Lok. Oh, gods!_ Tony wanted to say so much more, to somehow shape everything he felt into words, to give Loki all the comfort he could--he just hurt so bad internally he couldn't form a coherent thought.

In the instant before they started running the electric current through his bonds, like some kind of taser that never ended, Loki placed the image of a of perfect golden circle inside Tony’s head, turning so that he never could read all of what was written at one time, even if the words had been in English.

They spelled out: _Ég legg hjarta mitt í þínar hendur, mest elskuðu, hjarta hjarta mínu inn í hjarta þitt. Halda og halda mér, nú og alltaf, eins og alltaf ég halda og halda þér. Með blóði líf mitt, þá sver ég að sanna sannleika minn._

Tony had no idea in hell what it meant. He reached out desperately to touch Loki’s mind again, but it was only a jangle of disjointed thoughts, fractured emotion, anguish.

“You’re torturing him! You fuckers are torturing him!” Tony hissed, but Natasha put her hand on his shoulder.

_Not now_ , she mouthed, her grip tightening as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s minions grabbed hold of Loki’s thin arms.

“You and I, Tony,” Phil Coulson said calmly, “Will want to have words.”

“You’re no better than the rest of them!” Tony yelled practically in Agent’s—oh, that was right, _Director’s_ \--face, before Bruce put an arm around his back.

“Perhaps later in the week,” Coulson continued smoothly, “When you’ve had time to decompress? May I stop by the tower?”

Bruce squeezed harder, meaning it as both a comfort and a warning.

“I’m sure that would be great, right, Tony?” Bruce said, smiling a tight, phony, oh-god-we're-in-such-deep-shit grin. Tony could practically feel the unspoken warning, _Don't lose it, Tone, don't lose it_ , oozing out of his pores.

“Please don’t hurt him any worse. Phil, don’t hurt him any worse. Don’t… no solitary, okay? It’s what those fuckers did to him in Asgard, and here too, in Latveria. He's already on the very edge. I don’t know how much more he can take.”

“As my agent pointed out…” Coulson smiled slightly. “Asgardians _do_ heal. Why don’t I give you an update when I visit? For now, your QuinJet’s fueled and ready for departure whenever you are.”

Which left the five of them (who should officially change their team name to The Useless Avengers), shell-shocked and battered, glancing nervously at one another.

Fuck Thor for having taken off without a backward look, Baldr-pieces in hand. Like a chewed-up corpse couldn’t wait a few minutes? Like that took precedence over a living, injured brother? A powered-up thunder god might have made all the difference in this situation. As it was, Tony could hardly look as the Good Guys of S.H.I.E.L.D. all but dragged away the man he nearly loved.

He’d never for an instant felt more completely alone in his life, and that included all his years living with his pill-popping, mental-sketchy but intermittently-loving mom, and his alcoholic, womanizing, hypercritical, absentee old man.

Tony had spent his last days with people (roughly) who could not only, literally, get inside his head--in a way that helped him a million times more than all the shrinks he'd seen in his lifetime--but once in, still liked him just fine, and didn’t mind the mess. They loved him, even, and Tony would be the first to admit he wasn’t the world’s easiest guy to love. To be loved by people who saw, and knew, exactly who he was went so far beyond amazing he couldn't even express.

Finally, Cap sighed. “What do you say? Let’s go home, guys.”

“Sounds good to me,” Clint responded, the first thing he’d said in a long time. He looked thoughtful, and maybe more than a little pissed.

Tony himself didn’t have anything more to say, only a bunch of jagged ideas jumbled up in his head.

One was the tag end of a sad thought he’d caught drifting through Loki’s own mind: _my body was left for the crows on the barren stones of Svartalfheim, yet my defiler is carried in honor to the realm of his fathers by the brother who declared he loved me._ Followed by the thought _, Thor, in your heart you believed every word your worst self spoke unto me, how else could you abandon the brother of your youth into this?_

Tony watched something in the god just… shatter. He could feel all the jagged pieces.

How could any one of them still here in Castle Doom, except for Loki himself, look at anything they’d done in a positive light? How in hell could they think of calling themselves the good guys for even another minute?


	2. Captive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is a sick and miserable prisoner aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft, desperately afraid of what his future might hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Mossie," as the de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito was nicknamed, was a British twin-engine combat aircraft with a frame made almost completely of wood (another nickname was "The Wooden Wonder). They were used extensively by the RAF in WWII.
> 
> As some astute readers have already guessed, Myrddin is another name for the sorcerer most of us know as Merlin. Various versions of the legends refer to him by a number of different names. In Latin he's called "Ambrosius," and Geoffrey of Monmouth, known for his Arthurian tales, calls him "Merlin Ambrosius." Welsh historian Nennius writes of him appearing to King Vortigern (the king whose castle kept falling down due to dragon infestation) as a young boy named Emrys (fans of the Merlin TV series may remember that name), and in Wales alone he's known as Merlin Emrys or Myrddin Wyllt (Merlin the Wild).
> 
> Loki's quote, spoken by Don John the Bastard (in both senses of the word), comes from _Much Ado About Nothing_ : Act 1, Scene 3.

* * *

The S.H.I.E.L.D.-men and S.H.I.E.L.D.-women marched Loki through the grey corridors of Doom’s lair at a pace that, between his weakness and the artificial lightning they coursed through his limbs, he could not hope to match.

He had nothing left. Nothing physically, mentally, emotionally. Nothing to toughen and inspire him, or make him look to the future. When, inevitably, he fell, they all, these black-clad minions, sought to strike and prod him with their weapons. Distantly, in a state of frozen numbness, he felt himself kicked, even his hands trod upon as the agents crowded close, until he absolutely could not rise again another time. His strength was finished, and nothing could be done to change that fact.

Perhaps the plain man, their commander might have stopped all this, but the plain man had traveled on ahead of his minions, to what ends Loki could not guess.

He knew the cruelty of these "agents" ought to worry him, that he ought not to underestimate their fear and hatred of the alien, their desire for vengeance. That he did not was no measure of courage, he merely no longer had it within him. He had lost the capacity to care what they did.

An image popped into Loki’s head of his beloved, lazy Myrddin decades before, delicious Myrddin with his midnight hair and laughing ruby eyes, his spectacles pushed up to the top of his head as he sprawled all over the sofa of their London flat. “Oh, I know I ought to do it, Lo,” he’d say, about any number of things, “I just can’t be arsed at the moment.”

The image made Loki smile, if only a little, behind his gag.

“I gather Camelot fell, then, because you were napping?” he had joked in return.

"Get up! Get up!" the minions shouted at him.  "Monster," they called him, and "Murderer" and "Alien Freak."

Did these same men also name Thor an "Alien Freak," Loki wondered, or was such a singular honor reserved for him?

He meant to do as they required, honestly he meant to--had meant to do so from the first. He had no intention of antagonizing the mortals, not when he had no other, better place to run to than Midgard, not when he needed to build some sort of life for his children here. Not when he wanted to see his children, someday, again.

How could he, though, when the world had gone dim, filled with clouds of swirling grey? He could discern nothing, really, except for muted voices, heard as from a distant place. A feeling came to Loki of time flying past, of not knowing where his body lay. Perhaps the sensation ought to have been frightening, but for the moment he felt perfectly content to drift, apart from fear or pain.

A thrumming traveled later through his bones, as of powerful engines in their workings, and knew he must now be aboard—what had Tony called such machines of travel? A jet?

Just enough of his usual self remained that Loki found himself intrigued about jet-propelled aeroplanes as Tony described them, so different from the skiffs of Asgard or the great warriors’ airships, a different beast entirely from the beloved wooden Mossie two-seater he’d flown with the RAF in the Second War of All Midgard. Had he been more himself, at least the self he might become if this nightmare should ever allow him to awaken, he might have wanted to poke through its innermost workings with Tony as his guide, getting back to the part of his nature that was curious about everything, interested in everything, inquisitive and open to wonder.

He could not remember when his darker nature overcame him, converting so much of his emotion to malice, rage, bitterness and, oh, the desperate, desperate pain he felt so ill-equipped to handle. Had that transformation begun in the days of Sigyn and his sons, during the time of the serpent and the cavern, or so recently as that day his true heritage, his true self, had at last been revealed? Loki could not say.  He only knew that all had grown of the sense of always being other, never fully acceptable in the eyes of anyone. Never accepted. Never loved without reservation, not even by she who claimed to love him best.

Loki had never taxed her with it, unable to bear either the denials or excuses.

He knew it had been good Hodr, his brother, not Frigga, who saved him when he was a babe in swaddlings.

Loki wondered how the course of his life might have altered, had Hodr been allowed to live. That not being the case, he was left with words of the Midgardian maker of theatricals they named “The Bard:"

_…therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage._  
_If I had my mouth, I would bite;_  
_if I had my liberty, I would do my liking:_  
_in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me._

Sneaky Loki. Liar Loki. Loki of the weak, foolish ways. Loki the Horse-Fucker (never mind that that trick, that temptation, was by the Allfather's command). _Ergi_ Loki, with his magic and the rumored woman-parts in his belly and his monstrous babies.

Monstrous babies from a monstrous dam.

Loki missed his children so badly he wanted to weep. He truly feared he would never see them again.

Playing the game by the rules of others availed him nothing, and so he’d set out to wound as he had been wounded, to hurt to heal his own hurting.

All to discover that it was _engin fjandans notkun_.

_No fucking use_ , as Tony would say. None of it. No lessons were learned, ever, and he never felt better in himself, only soiled and weary.

They had shut him up in an airless small room whilst he had been insensible—Loki could feel one slick cold metal wall against his back, another with the soles of his bare feet.

The mortals of S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken his boots and clothing, Loki realized, and shorn his long hair nearly to nothing. The chill of the floor struck through his scalp and made his head ache even worse than before, though the same coolness soothed his hot cheek. His arms remained bound behind him, his other bonds attached to points in the walls, ceiling, floor, as he discovered with every slight move.

He felt breathlessly, helplessly, sick.

Obviously, their trust in his cooperation remained nonexistent, and they did not wish to hear anything of what he had to say.

Loki lay still as he could, trying to breathe shallowly, steadily, through his nose, trying to fight down his burning stomach, a pain that nearly eclipsed his other hurts. He had no way to reach the door—he assumed there must be a door—to cry help from those of S.H.I.E.L.D. Instead he beat his muzzle hard as he could against the floor, hoping to crack it open, or even to shake it loose a little.

He scrambled for any vestige of his _seiðr_ inside himself, but only found it lying cold, heavy and seemingly dead.

Shocked and terrified by the discovery, unable any longer to contain his rebellious body, Loki vomited, his eyes filling helplessly with stinging tears, his sinuses, mouth, throat, lungs all taking fire from the influx of burning acid. He tried to cough some of it out, but was hopelessly constrained by the muzzle, and in his coughing and choking, vomited again.

The door opened suddenly, allowing blinding light. Hands reached around the back of his head, releasing the muzzle, drawing the bit forth from his mouth, along with much of the sickening mess.

Loki coughed and coughed and coughed, was sick again, coughed more.

Although the light beyond the door continued to blind him, he could feel his rescuer regarding him.

“You’re in a bit of a state, aren’t you, Loki?” It was the voice of the plain man.

The plain man Loki believed he had slain, the one who claimed he "lacked conviction" (truer words never spoken, had the man but known)   frowned at him. “I think you ought to keep in mind,” he said mildly, “The seriousness of your situation."

Loki wept helplessly then, in agony and shame. “I am sorry,” he managed to gasp out. “I beg your mercy with the whole of my heart. I pray you do not muzzle me again. I am without magic. My _seiðr_ has died.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting. I’m also noticing that you’re still pretty dinged up, my friend. I apologize for that.  My agents are angry.  They got carried away.  Still, I have to ask, iIs that Asgardian healing not working?”

“I am not of the _Ӕsir_ ,” Loki answered wearily.

“Hmm,” the man said again. “Is that so? What would you call yourself, then? _Jötunn_? Thor refers to you as  _Jötunn_  .”

“Not _Jötunn_ , not _Ӕsir_. Nothing. Loki the monster, Son of None.”

Interesting," the plain man said, yet so bland was his tone, Loki could not tell if he actually felt interested, or not. "Your speech patterns have changed too, I've noticed.  They're much more formal.  Why is that?"

"I speak your English language to you now, the English of my thoughts," Loki replied wearily, "And no longer the Allspeak."

With supreme effort, he pushed himself back from what must have been a hideous mess on his floor, curling himself to the smallest ball that he could. He was shaking with cold now—he who never felt the least chill—and he tried to calm himself by thinking on more pleasant things, Tony’s surprised, half-abrupt kiss, his warmth and humour, Kurt's kindness and his beautiful cloud-soft fur, the lovely faces of his most-adored and wonderful children.

Loki could credit his children for saving him, if he had been saved, or changed. Being linked to their sweetness even in the midst of his agony. Loving them so entirely, he could not continue as he had been.

His time with Kurt and Tony continued the change. It continued to amaze him that Kurt could be as he was with all he had endured, that he could so easily see the good in him without the need for condemnation or condescension, with no need to push his nose into his misdeeds like the nose of an erring dog shoved into its filth. And Tony was so entirely casual about it all, he seemed to accept as given that Loki had done badly before, but could just as easily do well as he went on.

The tongue of the Ӕsir had words for neither atonement nor redemption. The Allspeak translated both with “ _to die in glorious battle_ ,” which Loki was far too clever to think meant anything like the same thing.

How strange it had been, to live for a time not beneath the never-ending thunderstorm of his sometime-father’s rage and disgust, the raincloud of his mother’s disappointment in him, the never-ending contempt of his so-called people.

“Oh, Loki, you could be so much better,” Frigga told him constantly—yet she never told him how.

And where had she been, anyway, in his earliest years, when Thor had all but raised him, the years before her discovery of his powerful _seiðr_ rendered him interesting? Absenting herself from the horrible _Jötunn_ thing her husband had foisted upon her, he supposed.

Loki the Monster. Son of None.


	3. Subject to a Different Interpretation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's heartbroken. The Avengers make assumptions. Steve tells a war story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "the whole nine yards"=the whole thing Although the origin of the phrase isn't known (there are a couple dozen theories, none of them proven), the first use of the phrase as a slang expression shows up in Southern Indiana in 1907.
> 
> Ugly-cry=cry in that really obvious way that makes your face twist up, your nose run, and your eyes produces buckets of tears.
> 
> Way back before the U.S. got with the rest of the world and began to (sometimes) use the metric system, "a fifth" (meaning 1/5 of a gallon, or roughly 757 ml was more or less the standard size for a bottle of spirits. A fourth of a fifth would be about 6 drinks at one go. Whoa! 
> 
> "down the hatch"=swallow   
> The expression comes from the lowering of freight into the hold of a ship, when the ship appears to "swallow" what's put into it.
> 
> "desperado"=a person made reckless by despair, or by a desperate situation. The faux-Spanish word originated in the 17th century, and is today often used to refer to a bandit or other criminal (though not in this case). " _Desperado_ is also a song by The Eagles, released on their 1973 album of the same name.
> 
> Patricia "Peppermint Patty" Reichardt is one of the "Peanuts Gang" in Charles M. Schulz's long-running comic strip. She first appeared in 1966.

* * *

The first thing Tony did when they all got on board was ugly-cry: snot, geysers of tears, the whole nine yards, while the rest of his team, even Bruce--sos far as Tony could tell through his meltdown--stood around looking awkward.

The second thing he did (still hiccuping and leaking slightly) was remove a panel in the back by the fire extinguisher, where he’d hidden a bottle of scotch, not even particularly the good stuff.

"Tone, what are you doing?" Bruce asked.

"We're well underway," Tony answered, in a hoarse, post-cry kind of way. "Serving onboard refreshments.  Want some?"

"You know I don't," Bruce said.

Tony unscrewed the top and drank a fourth of the fifth then and it there and then, glug-glug-glug, down the hatch, his back propped against the side of the plane, then went to his seat and strapped himself in, the bottle cuddled in his arms. His actions weren't productive, that he knew, but they _were_ comforting, the closest he could currently get to comfort at the moment, anyway.

He’d be productive when he got home. Probably hungover as hell, but productive. For him, the two had never been mutually exclusive.

Bruce plopped down in the seat beside him, looking Bruceish, which was to say all touchy-feelie and sympathetic. “Tone…”

“No,” Tony said. He was just so not in the fucking mood. “Just… no. See, I heard what you said to him when I was in Loki’s head. I heard it, Bruce, and I just thought you…”

Tony glared at his friend, but all he could see was Bruce’s good-hearted face, his kind eyes behind his glasses.

He took five long, hard swallows from the bottle, the most he could handle without breathing, without his head feeling as if it was going to burst instantly into flame. He gasped in air and tried to drink again, but Bruce held the bottle down by force.

“Not that I doubt your capacity or am trying to tell you how to live your life, my friend, but I’m also not letting you give yourself alcohol poisoning at 60,000 feet. Swear to god, I will stick my fingers down your throat first.”

He released the bottle, patting Tony’s knee instead. “I know it’s been hard. I know it’s been really hard.”

“At this moment,” Natasha said from the first row of seats, “I am not proud to be a member of this team. For your information.” She was varnishing her nails blood red and the smell of the polish was, quite frankly, making Tony a little sick to his stomach.

Or maybe it was the entire day he’d just had

“I feel desolate,” he said, and yes, it felt like the right word in his mouth, bitter and ashy. Without the kids’ voices in his head, without Kurt’s gentle practicality and Loki’s—there was probably no other term for it—gorgeous mental Grand Opera, balanced with his growing love and trust, Tony’s own mind now seemed empty except for the manic dust and tumbleweeds of his own disjointed thoughts.

Tony missed them bitterly. He didn’t know how he’d survived so far up until this point, where his life entirely changed. He didn’t know how he’d survive now. He felt like the kid on crutches in the _Pied Piper_ story, who got one little glimpse of the kingdom of wonder and glory before the big ugly mountain slammed shut in his face. His personal mountain seemed to have slammed with a vengeance.

While Bruce’s attention was distracted, Tony sneaked another long drink.

Bruce jerked back to attention. “Swear to god, Tony. Fingers. Down. The throat.”

“I can’t do this, guys,” Tony answered, frankly proud he wasn’t yet slurring in the least. Well, that would be changing soon enough, if he had anything to say about it. “I can’t.”

That won him another knee-pat from his best friend. “Tony, chances are he had you mind-controlled the whole time. He may have looked pathetic, but the guy is not without resources.”

“Mind-thrall.” Clint was suddenly hanging over the back of the seat ahead, muscular arms folded on the headrest. “That’s what he calls it. Thrall equals slave, I guess, for SpaceVikings? And you know, I have to say, my first coherent thought after Nat clocked me and I came out of it wasn’t, _Christ, I trashed the helicarrier, hope they don’t take that one out of my pay, or even, Jesus, did I really help the god of mischief melon-ball some dude’s eye?_ It was how damn much I wanted him back. He’s a hellishly seductive, addictive fuck. And that, boys and girl, is the real reason it took me a million years to get cleared again for active duty. It wasn’t that I was mind-controlled or had other lingering effects, it was that I wanted to be the Labrador retriever of a fucking Viking chaos god. I fucking hated him because I still loved him so much. Same thing with the Swedish scientist dude, Selvig, Thor said. He couldn’t get over having a god in his head, only it was maybe worse for him, what with his age, and the whole gods-of-his-forefathers thing."

“And being completely fucking fruitloops to begin with, IMHO.” Natasha waved her hands gently to dry her scarlet nails.

Clint twisted partially, regarding her. “Hey, Nat, is that the poison polish? Better tell Peppermint Patty to watch out for you tonight.”

“As if I plan to put the activant in my welcome home champagne?” Natasha sneered delicately. “Did you guys just think I was just being girly? This is fun stuff. Put a colorless, odorless…”

“Iocane,” Clint interjected.

Tony continued to be amused that _The Princess Bride_ was Clint’s favorite movie.

“Powder,” Natasha continued patiently, “In your mark’s drink..."

"Five minutes later, one little scratch…” Clint clutched at his throat and crossed his eyes.

“No wonder you guys are everyone’s favorite couple,” Bruce said drily.

“Couple?” Clint scoffed. “Honestly, Bruce? Honestly?”

“You guys aren’t a couple?” Tony knew they were trying to distract him from his own troubles, but at the moment he could use the distraction. It was a long flight. He needed to pace his sorrow-drowning alcohol abuse.

“Seriously?” Natasha made a megaphone of her hands, mouthing a silent “Director Coulson” while pointing at Clint’s ass, then shook her head with a Mona Lisa smile, one eyebrow lifting slightly. “Take a moment to appreciate this! Can my Patty keep a secret or what? Under your very nose, Stark!”

Tony, who’d started almost drifting off into a haze of exhaustion, booze and absolute misery, suddenly jolted awake into "Say what?" moment. "What? Pepper? You're joking.  Honestly, Nat, I thought she hated you. Fuck, I’d thought Pep never left the building because she was working too many hours. I was just about to order her to take vacation time.”

“Yes, Tony, you permanently scared her away from men. To the point that I look like the less frightening, more reliable alternative.” Natasha smiled sweetly, then followed it up with an evil cackle.

"We're the fucking Gayvengers." Clint snickered, then made grabby hands for Tony’s bottle.

"Cap, Thor and Bruce excepted, of course."

Tony frowned, but passed the scotch anyway. He was fairly impressed by how the archer could manage way more than five swallows without needing to breathe. He lost track around fifteen. Maybe it was a fire-breathing, circus kind of talent.

“We’d very much appreciate the vacation though, Tony.” Natasha switched to her wicked grin. “Someplace sunny, maybe? Though we gorgeous redheads do have to look out for our porcelain skins, so maybe someplace with excellent shopping? I am a little girly, you know. You’re such a generous boss, and Pep does work very hard running your company.”

“Forgive me,” Tony said, “I’m still slightly distracted picturing the two of you together. Shopping. Totally picturing you two shopping for high-end merchandise.”

Clint laughed. “How’s that endless love for the god of mischief working for you?”

Bruce pointed at his seatmate. “Oh, Tony equals happily bisexual since forever. Of course, take a moment to consider the woe that is me, since I have the world’s least romantic partner—the Other Guy.

“Sucks to be you, dude,” Clint said, not without sympathy.

“At least I get to secretly mock and jeer when your love lives combust in your faces,” Bruce answered genially. "You know my gentle, sympathetic face?” He demonstrated. “Behind that?—pure, fiendish mockery.”

“About what?” Steve sauntered back from the cockpit. “And, before you ask, Tony, yes, I remembered to put the plane on autopilot. So, what did I miss?”

“Tony being heartbroken because he hadn’t realized Loki and the Lokettes were totally mindf… thralling him their whole time together,” Clint said.

“A. shut up, Clint,” Tony said. “B. not quite ready to have you mock my heartbreak or feel like a total gullible dick.” That much was completely true. Plus, crack about the Lokettes aside, there were the kids. Unless Loki…

Then it hit him.

What if Mr. God-of-Lies had totally Jedi mind-fucked him into protective mode, made him see as special, sweet, amazing, what he should have seen as monstrous: Hela with her dead-white skin, scaly blue-tongued Jӧri drinking Loki’s blood, wolf-boy Fen? Loki must have sent his whammy deep on that one, because even thinking of the kids in that light, as inhuman monsters, nearly ripped his heart out.

“Mindfthralling?” Natasha laughed. “Nice save there, pretend boyfriend.”

“I have heard the f-word before, you know,” Cap said. “You may recall, I _was_ in the army.”

“Oh, Cap,” Natasha said, “You are precious. Here’s a thought, though? What about Little Blue?”

“Okay, there is that,” Bruce answered thoughtfully.

“What?” Tony asked. He’d taken the chance to address his bottle again once he nabbed it back from Clint, and it was starting to show.

“Little Blue. Fuzzy Elf. The guy with the gorgeous… uh… tail.”

“Uh… tail, huh?” Clint snickered again.

“So, Tony and I both embrace our beautiful bi-ness. Remember that rescue mission we teamed up with some of the eXies for? The SmartScaper Uptown that went insane? Well, I crawled after that sublime ass down a maze of air ducts for three hours to reach the hostages. It was literally the only thing my headlamp lit up. I think I fixated, or imprinted, or something. I had kinky tail-sex dreams for a month.”

“Oh!  Kurt!” Tony announced suddenly.

“I just don’t see Kurt being mind-controlled,” Bruce put in. “I've known him awhile. He’s one of Xavier’s second generation, for starters, not Summers and McCoy and that lot, but the next set, which means he had a lot of time being coached by the old man himself to avoid telepathic invasion. Xavier even put something like a kill-switch in some of his people, too, the ones whose abilities could easily be misused, so if someone tried to stage a takeover—like mind-controlling Kurt into assassinating the president or something which, as you probably noticed back there in the throne room, he could most likely do with incredible ease--he’d basically go into a coma until the threat was removed. Kurt told me once that the only one strong enough to do an override was his own father, and that was just because of the strong blood connection. Loki may have the same kind of raw power as Azazel, but not the blood. I honestly don’t think he could do it.”

“Besides,” Natasha said, not looking flippant now, but troubled. “When you guys were standing around all ensorcelled, with your collective thumbs up your collective perky asses, right after Thor woke up, Thor went to town on Loki, saying vicious things, basically cleaning his clock, smashing him against the wall. Kurt jumped in to try to save him. Then Thor tried to crush Kurt’s throat and Loki told Thor to kill him instead, but leave his friend alone. Those two guys love each other like brothers or something, or I don’t know anything about human nature. It wasn’t forced. I swear it wasn’t forced.”

“Excuse me, Bruce,” Tony said. His friend got up to let him pass and he made it to the postage-stamp-sized head with a minimum of running into walls. Once inside, door locked, he sat on the closed toilet seat and cried again until he felt hollow and shaky. After, turning on the water high as it would go in an attempt to dim the sound, he did what Bruce had threatened to do and made himself throw up.

He didn’t want to be drunk anymore.  Furthermore, he damn well wasn’t going to listen to Clint or anybody after all, he decided.

"Do not allow them to corrupt our love and make it a lesser thing in your eyes," his beautiful (and sharp as tacks) Hela had commanded. Well, a man had to take a stand somewhere, and Tony was going to stand up and be counted with her, with his crazy/beautiful Loki, with his darling boys, with Fuzzy, who was probably the only purely good person he'd ever met. If he was being used, to hell with it, he didn’t care. He wanted his family back.

That was all. Even if he was forced into loving them, he still loved them. The end.

When his stomach was empty and the toilet flushed, he rinsed his mouth with mouthwash and emerged to join his friends, fetching bottles of water from the cooler for everyone.

“What demeaning things are we discussing now?” Tony asked as he passed out the beverages.

“Steve’s single gay thought, back in the war,” Clint said.

Cap was blushing furiously, but Tony had a feeling it wasn’t so much with the gayness as with something else—that this was a story that really meant something to him, maybe one he’d never told anyone before. Given his audience, probably regretted letting anything slip.

“Guys, ssh, this is for real,” Natasha said.

“Listen to her,” Tony said. “Shut up, Philistines. Let the man speak.”

Cap sighed--then gave Tony a look. It was usually his Number One job to be the wise-ass of the group.

"Seriously, _Mon Capitaine_ ," Tony said, "Speak on."

“So, to continue..." Steve sounded vaguely uncertain, at first, but he warmed up as he went on. "We’d heard rumors about this one British officer for months before we were assigned to guard him. Some guys called him “The Shadow”--like the character on the radio with the power to cloud men’s minds? Some called him “The Wizard.” About all anyone really knew was that he was this very English, very upper-crust kind of guy--like Eton and Cambridge and huge country home upper-crust. Some said he was handsome, like a movie star, very tall and slender, that he could move absolutely without making a sound, open any lock of any kind, walk in anywhere, just wafting past the guards like smoke.

"And that’s just what he did, like magic. For real. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, but he did. He’d liberate train cars bound for the concentration camps, or shut down entire prison camps full of Allied POW’s and get everyone to safety. He smuggled out scientists that could help the Allied cause, intellectuals, national treasures. He’d parachute in, all on his own and be gone in a night, leading the captives north through neutral Sweden, apparently--though no one ever remembered marching through Sweden for days. He was fluent in Swedish and had heavy connections there, probably even family—maybe even royal family, it was said. That along with being British he was also some kind of Scandinavian prince. He used every loophole in the country’s neutrality for his own purposes.

“We had a lot of time to talk,” Steve recalled, wistfully. "At the end."

“Was he handsome like a movie star?” Natasha asked, “And all those other things?”

“He was…” Steve paused again and Tony could have sworn he saw moisture glistening in his eyes. “Funny—even dying, he could make me laugh every time. Kind, though he’d make a joke of it if you caught him in the act. Beautiful, I suppose, is the only word. He was taller than me and, as I’ve said, very thin, but graceful, quick, nearly as strong as I am. His skin was so fair it glowed in the moonlight, not pasty, just… like moonlight and starlight. Even his hands, the way they moved was beautiful, and his voice…” Steve looked down at his own big, powerful hands, struggling with something—probably, Tony thought, just to sound like himself, to keep his voice calm and even.

“I was with a party of my Commandos. The Shadow had just freed a whole bunch of scientists from Hydra and escorted them to safety, and he had some other guys with him, some American grunts he’d liberated on their way to a P.O.W camp. We were supposed to meet him at the Swedish border and see him safely from there across the northwest corner of Germany to the hands of the French Resistance at the northeastern border of France, because the _Führer_ had had enough of the Captain’s activities after the Hydra debacle, and was out for his head in the biggest way. We had to fight for every step and, tough as my guys were, if it hadn’t been for Captain Friggason we would have bought it a hundred times. It was like he could make us invisible when he wanted. As it was, we only lost two men.”

“Wow,” Natasha said, with a look of pure innocence—or as pure or innocent as Natasha was capable of looking, anyway. “Wasn’t Thor’s mom named Frigga? I wonder if that’s a common Scandinavian name?”

Tony shook his woozy head at her. He hadn’t exactly missed the point of Cap’s story either, even if it seemed like maybe Steve had.

“Our luck held until we were barely forty miles from France. We’d ducked down in some underbrush near a small bridge, waiting for a German transport we’d been playing hide and seek with for the last fifty miles to pass us by. The transport must have been heavier than the usual vehicles that went over, because its rumbling set off some old explosives under the bridge and suddenly the air was so full of shrapnel it was like someone had exploded a giant wasps’ nest. What it boiled down to, though, is that the Nazis were dead and my guys were okay, baring a few scrapes and nicks.

“Or that’s what I thought, until Capt. Friggason caught hold of my sleeve. “Capt. Rogers,” he said, “A moment of your time?” I felt a horrible cold sensation in the pit of my stomach, I didn’t even know why. I’d have said it was impossible for Friggason to go paler than he normally was, but in that moment he looked ghostly. He gave a small, polite cough, as if trying genteelly to get someone’s attention, and then a trickle of blood came down from the corner of his mouth. He blotted it with a neatly-folded handkerchief.

"How can he possibly still possess a neatly-folded handkerchief? I thought, just before I realized that the front of his tunic had been torn right open, all of it stained dark, sopping wet with blood. "He took one little tripping half-step toward me and his hand flew to my shoulder, for support, I guess, but also just to give an affectionate squeeze.

"He smiled at me, the kindest little smile. “It’s time for you to gather up the boys, Steve, and be on your way. I shan’t visit France again this year.”

“He turned and walked away from me, the stiff-backed British fool, just like no one would care what happened to him. I watched him skid down the steep riverbank to where he’d be hidden from anyone who happened by. Planning, I guess, to die all on his own.

"I don't know why, after all the stuff I'd seen, but I wanted to cry like a little kid, just plop down in the middle of that muddy German road and bawl my eyes out. I took my guys and went, and got all of about ten feet before I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t leave him. Maybe I could have saved more of my men, and the men Friggason freed, if I’d gone, if I’d fought alongside them, but I couldn’t leave.

"They were good guys, they said they’d bring help. They’d have done it too, or died trying. I guess they did die trying, most of them," Steve murmured. "They were good guys.

“I made a little burrow for us, a shelter by the riverbank, and we just talked, for almost four days. Or I talked, anyway, about... everything, I guess, about Bucky, and Peggy, about the serum, the old neighborhood, how it had felt to be me, the old me, I mean, how I had wanted, wanted so much…

"Low—I guess that was short for Lowell, though I was too dumb to ask—Captain Friggason--just listened most of the time. He was pretty weak, in a lot of pain. The shrapnel had cut straight through his ribs, into his chest, like a razor sitting there right against the upper curve of his heart, one end hooked beneath. It actually kind of amazed me he'd lived. It wasn't really the kind of injury a person lives through. Maybe for minutes, but not for days. I didn’t dare take the thing out.

"And then his heart and all the tissues began to swell, so that the metal cut in deeper little bit by a little bit. Sometimes he was delirious, calling out to someone in Swedish, I guess. I got the impression his dad really was some kind of Scandinavian royalty, and he had a big brother he loved and missed, and a sweetheart back in England he couldn’t marry for family reasons.”

Steve laced his fingers together lightly, glaring down at the toes of his boots. “Halfway through the fourth day, he finally bled to death in my arms. There wasn’t anything I could do. I loved him, kind of, I guess. I let him down. He was a hero. I didn’t mean the story to be so long and depressing.” He straightened, turning back toward the cockpit. “And, hey, I guess we’re getting near home. I better go fly this tin can for real, huh?”

Cap dropped into the pilot seat, snugging his headphones over his ears.

Natasha knelt on the seat next to Clint’s. “That was truly, truly painful,” she said.

“You know I love Cap like a brother,” Bruce put in, “But I begin to gain an inkling of understanding for the nickname of ‘Captain Oblivious.’”

“Clearly Loki faked his own death,” Clint mumbled into the headrest, fighting not to break into obvious giggles, “Just to avoid having to listen to any more of Steve-o’s boring-ass life story.”

“No,” Tony said suddenly, sharply. “Just… no. Loki did it to be kind. Cap had been sitting outside in the winter cold for four days tending to a dying friend. He needed to go home. That was the only way to make him leave.”

“Wow.” Clint stared at him as if staring at a stranger. “This can’t be the Tony Snark we know and love?”

“He’s been spending an awful lot of time with St. Kurt the Nauseatingly Kind,” Bruce laughed. “That sort of thing can rub off, I hear.”

“I wish it would rub off on you,” Natasha said crisply. “What's up, Bruce? You’ve been a nastyish piece of work ever since we hit Latveria.  Did Baldr flashy the kindness out of you? I’m glad Tony wasn’t there to hear you in the dungeons. It would not have been friendship-building in any way. And, Tone, do you think it’s true, about Loki saving all those people in the war? Because if it is, isn’t that pretty damn fine ammunition for your cause? Crunch the numbers, find the statistics about who was saved. Hell, trot out some elderly people who ended up living rich, full lives due to the bravery of one Captain Friggason."

“Nat,” Tony answered, “I doff my genius cap to you. You have fully earned the honor. That is one fucking brilliant idea. Now if you’ll excuse…”

Bruce glanced at him with concern, just to prove the good old Bruce was still in there after all. “You okay, Tony?”

“Fantastico. Just wanna talk to Cap for a minute. You know—find out how far out we really are?”

Bruce didn’t look like he believed Tony, exactly, but he didn’t say anything more, just scooted out to let him pass. Tony zig-zagged up to the cockpit, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat. Cap, he saw, still hadn’t turned off the autopilot. Instead he sat in his seat with perfect Captain America posture, staring at the heavy rain that streaked the window in front of his face.

“'Captain Oblivious,' huh?” Steve said. “Is that new or has it been my name all along?”

“Don’t take it like that, Steve.” Tony said quietly. “You know how we are. In fact, I bet things haven’t changed that much since the good old days. Didn’t you and your guys give each other crap pretty much 24/7?”

That earned him a slight smile. “Pretty much.”

“So, it’s just friendly. Even me. We give you a hard time because you give us a lot to live up to. And, by the way, color me impressed by that Super Soldier hearing.”

Steve gave a little laugh. “It comes in handy, now and then. But what is it you’ve all figured out that you’re not telling?”

_To tell or not to tell?_ Tony wondered, then figured, _Aw, what the hell._

“It’s like this,” he began. “What if your Captain Friggason wasn’t dead after all? What if he, uh, faked it so you’d leave him and get yourself to safety?”

“That would have been an awfully noble thing to do. But his wound, that was real. It was horrible. He’d have had to have healing powers like, umn, maybe Thor to survive it… Oh, Hell’s Bells.” Steve’s jaw actually dropped. He looked like the textbook definition of the word“gobsmacked.”

Finally, he shook his head, laughing at himself with as close to Steve could actually get to a touch  of bitterness. “What do you know? I really am Captain Oblivious!” He sobered almost at once. “But the Battle of New York… The Chitauri invasion…”

“Tricks, Steve. They’re his thing. What he does. He had to mount just enough of an invasion to convince his Chitauri masters and to get us to mobilize, but not enough that we couldn’t contain most of the damage he threw at us. He had to be obnoxious as possible to make us hate him and want to pummel the hell out of him. We had to see him as an enemy and a threat. He as much as told Nat, ‘activate the Hulk, please.’ Who else could hit someone like him—like he was back then--hard enough to break the mind control, like the Widow did for Clint? It took a yard of guts, Steve."

"And what did we do to him in return? Shipped him off to Asgard where there was no chance his jerk of a dad would spend two seconds to listen, much less allow him any sort of impartial hearing—any more than we did, we put him in a muzzle, for god’s sake! So, coming off some truly soul-destroying family drama, where he basically found out everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie, he spent a year being tortured in Chitauriland, helped save our world from ultimate destruction and got sentenced to lifetime in solitary for his pains.”

“Wow,” Steve said. “That’s quite a different way of looking at things, Tony. I think I need to let it sink in.”

“Just, before you dismiss me as a mind-controlled nutcase, line it up with what you know about your Captain Friggason.”

“I will if I can, Tony,” Steve answered solemnly, adding after a minute, “You know, don't you... There's every chance S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t treat him well.”


	4. Humility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all agents are good agents. Loki engages in some bitter mischief in response to his punishment. Alone, he remembers the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "out of sight, out of mind"=when we don't see something frequently, we tend to forget about it. This one may go all the way back to the 13th century, though the earliest use in print appears to be in John Heywood's 1546 publication, _A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue_ , in which the proverb appeared as "Out of sight out of minde."

* * *

“You jest,” Loki said wearily.

The corridor stretched on seemingly endlessly to either side of the miniscule chamber where he stood, the one the Woman of S.H.I.E.L.D. who accompanied him named the “janitor’s closet.” She placed a rough, wooden-backed brush in his hand, then a squashy, rectangular item, but his crushed fingers could not grip either object and they tumbled to the tiled floor.

“You can get them later,” said the woman of S.H.I.E.L.D. She had fair hair and summer-blue eyes, like Thor’s, except that hers possessed no life or light whatsoever. “Take the bucket, pour in a cupful of the green liquid, fill with hot water. Scrub with the brush, clean up the excess water with the sponge. When your water gets dirty, change it. When you’ve done the whole length, go over it again with plain water for the rinse. You may be a filthy alien but you should be able to handle a little cleaning.”

“What am I meant to be learning today?” Loki asked her.

“Isn’t it obvious?” the woman asked. “Today’s lesson is humility. Get your water ready, then, as you like to say, kneel. Isn’t that your thing? Kneeling?”

“I cannot do this thing,” Loki said to her, struggling with the last scraps of his patience. “I am incapable at this moment in time.”

“Look, Prisoner Laufeyson, you are not a god, you are not a prince, you are a vicious psychopath, and you owe us. Furthermore, you will not be fed until you finish.”

“That is no great threat, for I was without food the entire first week I spent in this place, when your scientists of S.H.I.E.L.D. performed experimentation upon my body and, indeed, the second, and now I cannot eat the food you supply. It causes me great distress,” Loki told her. “And I am not a vicious psychopath. I am not. Never, for myself, have I taken pleasure in a killing.”

“That’s kind of your bad luck, isn’t it? Though I notice you don’t deny you’ve killed. That you are, in fact, a killer.”

“I was raised a warrior, a prince of a warrior culture. As such have I fought for Asgard, and as a Briton have I fought in loyalty to my king. He could not mention his plan to cheat Thanos and the Chitauri. She would not have understood. "It was ever a matter of honor and duty--or perhaps vengeance, as vengeance figures largely in our beliefs--but never of pleasure.”

“Boy, oh, boy, still so proud!”

“I said that I was raised a prince, not that I _was_ a prince, or am,” Loki told her even more wearily, half turning away. In truth, the pain was extraordinary, and he’d begun to feel very sick again. He leaned his aching head against the cool white wall.“The thread of my life, apparently, is spun from the same earth-brown as any common man’s.”

“In case you’re still paying attention, you also will not be allowed to rest—or leave this hallway-- until you’ve finished.” The Woman of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s smile was dagger-sharp. “Enjoy your workday, Prisoner Laufeyson. Make this hallway gleam. And in case you get any ideas, there are guards right outside the doors, at either end of the hall.”

“I ask you, respected Lady of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Loki said, as he said every time, “Please do not call me by that name.”

He refused to address her other words.

The woman of S.H.I.E.L.D. only walked away, leaving Loki standing in his fetters. He wanted to call after her, to tell her he had learned that lesson of humility long since, but it scarcely seemed to matter. He must do as he was told, regardless of his ability to perform the task.

He had been vain, once, of his clever hands. He had been vain of any number of things: his superiority, his wit, his Craft, his intelligence. Yet none of it meant anything, none of it _was_ anything.

In a puny act of defiance, Loki gathered up the new pitiful stirrings of his _seiðr_ and made the bedamned corridor gleam, just as the Woman of S.H.I.E.L.D commanded, though indeed not in the _way_ she commanded, here and there adding a glimmering emerald to the now-immaculate green tile, laughing as the blood streamed down his face. He ducked into the broom cupboard, using his once-more fading _seiðr_ to trip the lock, then seal it behind--they would need to break the door to reach him.

Unlike the lights of his cell, that burned brightly always, the lights of the cupboard switched off, leaving Loki in near-perfect darkness. He slid down against the door, his body blocking even the narrow line of light that came through from the outer world. Such blessedness, in the dark. Bit by bit, he noticed the flow of his blood increasing, almost relishing the floating, half-euphoric feeling such loss of vital essences induced, which would not have been possible with his original, or his borrowed, physiologies.

He could not remember the days that had passed since he stood in von Doom’s great hall and placed into Tony’s mind what amounted to a pledge of his troth in his own tongue, the only words that could be binding to him, sealed by his own magic.

If Tony had wanted to know Loki’s meaning, he could have discovered it easily enough with a moment or so of work on his Aethers, his "internets." The language of the _Aesir_ he knew, was not so very different from the Icelandic of modern times. Likely Tony could request the English words upon his Googler, or his StarkKnow. Clearly he cared not to do so as yet. Else he did not care at all. Loki's words would likely have meant nothing to the one he loved, even had Tony understood them. Likely he had only been foolish with his own heart once again.

What was that proverb of the Midgardians? “Out of sight, out of mind?” At any rate, he must be very horrible to look upon now, and in truth he had never been comely, unlike Thor. Many had told him as much in Asgard--the words "pale, worm-like thing" had been used, and "soot-colored hair, black as his heart" and that was not even taking into his account his hideous _Jӧtunn_ form, blood-eyed, scarred, horned and blue as the dead--or his shameful interior malformations.

Loki never truly understood why he had given Myrddin such delight. Perhaps it was his cleverness. But cleverness in a bed-mate was not such a virtue with Tony.

Tony would not want him, were he here. Tony would not want him, wherever he might be. Tony, he suspected, had by now been schooled by his Shield-Brothers and Shield-Sister, and thought him a liar, and a thief of trust.  As always, he’d been given no chance to defend himself.

Desperate with longing in his first week of imprisonment, Loki had arranged an awkward scrying with a shallow pool of water cupped in his own crabbed hand. They allowed him no door on his room of requirement, but he also noticed that they tended to abate their observation of him when he was sick, and the itching illness he’d caught somehow, along with its other indignities, had made him be sick with tedious frequency. It presented him with the perfect opportunity as well, albeit with perhaps the worst concentration he had ever possessed for a working.

He had been unable to raise a single image, but perhaps that was the thread of his slowly-regenerating  _seiðr_  offering him protection: the heartless words Tony exchanged with his friends had been enough. Loki felt fairly certain the actual sight of the man he loved in the act of betraying him would have broken his mind entirely.

As it was, hearing the words cut out his heart and left that organ bleeding before him.

He did not believe he had managed to eat or sleep since then, even once they had supplied him with a blanket and food. His thoughts turned in ugly circles, circles he supposed he had earned for himself—one had only once to create a mind-thrall of a single man to bring all subsequent actions into question, and if he had truly been the evil god all believed, the scenario Tony proposed would have indeed been provident. He would have protected his children, protected himself.

If he had, in truth, been a god, which he knew now he was not. One cannot be a god when one is nothing, unworshipped, unloved save for his children and his dear friend. It struck Loki for the thousandth time that he would never see his sweetlings again. Thoughts of them lighted his mind like the works of fire some Midgardians exploded on their holy days.

They must know, his children, they must know how he loved them. He felt desperately sorry to have failed them so, to have brought them into life in this cold-hearted world, then left them so soon. His only consolation was that his dearest Kurt would have the rearing of them, and for that reason they would have daily demonstration that they were loved.

Loki smiled slightly. It was a good thought, one to cling on to in the darkness.

He must have tumbled over. The tiled floor felt sweetly cool under his cheek, and for once the hardness of the surface did not cause his bones to ache. He began to dream of his childhood, of being very small indeed, of sitting unswaddled in Thor’s lap as silver moonlight poured through the window. In the dream, his skin was softly blue, and his brother told him, delighted, “Loki, you look like the sky! Will you sing to me again the song of snowy mountains?”

Loki sang to him inside his head, and then Thor sang to him aloud, very flatly and loudly, but with great enthusiasm, a marching song of the _Ӕsir_. Loki, still too young to speak, informed Thor (again inside his head) that he sounded exactly like the she-goat Adelheid when she wanted her feed, and the two of them laughed together heartily.

The realization came to Loki that this had not been a dream at all, but an old, old memory forgotten, and he wished with all his heart that he had never, never got it into his head to hate and burn with jealousy for his brother, and, more than that, that Thor had never come to hate him in return


	5. A Post-Midnight Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony has a horrible month. Thor stops in for a talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI=for your information
> 
> "a pound of flesh"=a debt for which a ridiculously harsh repayment is required. The phrase was first used (in its literal sense) in Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_ (1596). Its use in the figurative sense dates back to the late 18th century.
> 
> hypervigilance=a state of being constantly on the alert for potential danger or threat. It's very common in people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and those who've suffered abuse (or witnessed family members suffering abuse).
> 
> " _mise en place_ "=everything in its place  
> This phrase from French cooking specifically refers to the preparation of a chef's cooking space, so that everything is laid out and ready to go, making the cooking process more efficient.

* * *

It had been, Tony considered, a shit month nearly every way you looked at it.

Okay, Stark Industries was doing just great, thank you very much, but Pepper seemed to be mad at him in that special way she had of being all polite and nice and thoughtful. When she actually liked him she gave him constant feisty Pepper hell.

Not even presenting her and “a guest” with a very nice trip to the French Riviera broke the perma-chill. A vacation she had yet to take, by the way—she’d told him she was “currently too busy” in a terrifyingly pleasant tone of voice.

Add to that the fact that relations with S.H.I.E.L.D. were at an all-time impasse. Clint and Natasha still did their regular thing (which Tony emphatically didn’t want to know about), but Clint had been looking a flavor of down that went far beyond his usual brand of intense—he’d even stopped recreationally perching in high places and could often be found slumped on the common area sofa, sometimes with a game controller in his hand, but never with any game playing on the console, sometimes alternating between big screen viewings of  _Captain Blood_ and _The Princess Bride_ on more or less continuous loop.

Tony kept catching Nat gazing at him thoughtfully, and he didn’t have to be a genius to know the Widow’s thoughtfulness (of the "I'm thinking about something" variety) probably had a lot to do with Pep’s perma-chill.

“She knows!” he exploded to Bruce. “She fucking knows what’s up with Loki, but she’s not telling.”

And speaking of exploding, that’s what Bruce’s head nearly did, from the cognitive dissonance of being an extremely good guy by nature, while all the while his insane hatred of Loki fought it out with his intense hatred of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Even Cap seemed a shade or two off from his usually noble and perfectly positive self.

Tony had taken to dropping by Director’s office, unannounced, from one to several times a week, only to find that Phil Coulson had apparently been taking extra-terrifyingly-pleasant lessons from Pep. He always seemed more inclined to talk about topics like the World Series or budgeting concerns, rather than to answer questions like, “Are you playing alien autopsy on my almost-boyfriend?”

Kurt called Tony once a week, always from a different number—probably cheap burner phones he used once then dropped in a lake. From a few hints, as well as things left unsaid, Tony suspected Logan had taken the whole pack of them north, to his old Canadian stomping grounds.

Underneath Kurt's usual calm cheerfulness he sounded tired and sad.

“What?” Tony asked. “What’s up, Fuzzy? You can tell me.”

“Fen is with us now,” Kurt answered. “Northstar flew him up to where we are. Hank tells me his body is well and strong, with no ill effects from the coma.”

Tony felt cold. Fen had been in a coma? It figured, with Doom’s weird death-ray thing, the machine he'd wrecked to hell--that shit, whatever it did, exactly, had been all over Fen and Loki.

Tony should have been there, to hold him, to talk to him. Fen was always happiest when being cuddled or petted. He thrived on love.

“And Jöri? Hela?”

“ _Ach_ ,” Kurt sighed. “Hela exists in perpetual state of fury. Poor Jöri doesn’t understand why people mean them harm. He thought we had defeated the monsters, yet here we are. Both are sad. They have bad dreams. They cry.”

“For Loki?”

“And for you, _mein Freund_. And for you.”

“I’m not sure it helps to hear that, Kurt.”

“I suppose it does not,” Kurt answered. “Try to get him out sooner rather than later, _ja_?”

“I’m trying,” Tony said, “I really am.”

“Try harder.” The lack of expression in Kurt’s normally expressive voice told Tony everything he needed to know.

Just the day before, the Avengers (minus Thor, of course, who still hadn’t returned from SuperVikingLand or hanging with his girlfriend in London or New Mexico or whatever the hell the god of unreliability did when he wasn’t helping out his teammates the way he was supposed to be doing) had had their asses handed to them by Magneto and a sampling of his crew, and had to have their bacon saved by the X-men.

The X-Men, for god’s sake!

Highlights included his latest super-fantastic, totally non-ferrous suit (which completely ought to have been impervious to anything Magneto could throw at it) being reduced to a super-dense metal block the size and shape of a lunchbox. He would never be able to look at an Iron Man lunchbox the same way again.

To top it off, the suit started compacting when he was still well off the ground, and he’d had to bail from about two stories up, naturally landed wrong, fractured a miniscule but crazy- painful bone in his foot and ended up being bride-carried home by Captain America, with the super-hot French-Canadian dude from the eXies audibly snickering at him. In French. He wasn’t exactly sure how laughter could be French, but this guy’s was, definitely.

It made him forget, in that moment, any desire in his heart to even ask after Logan and Kurt. But he wanted to. He really, really wanted to.

The desire didn’t leave even after Bruce had fixed up his foot, issued him crutches and tucked him into his own bed with a comforting bowl of soup and a couple of pain pills. Bruce even said he’d sleep over in case Tony needed anything. Tony could think of lots of things he needed. Not many of them involved Bruce occupying the other side of his bed, one of the guest-rooms, or even his sofa.

Still, they settled in to watch the original _Indiana Jones_ movie, but both fell asleep before the first squiggly red line started marking its way across the map.

Tony had a dream that his foot wasn’t hurt at all, that he was walking barefoot across the living area, the carpet plushy under his toes. He was hurrying to get outside, though he didn’t know why—until he saw someone was waiting for him on the terrace.

He stopped with his hands pressed to the glass. His visitor was Loki—of course it was!— looking healthy and happy and, god!, so completely edible in a dark green button down shirt and black skinny jeans, the wind outside blowing his wavy black hair around his face.

He seemed to catch sight of Tony on the other side of the glass and hurried to him, smiling, his face full of tenderness, joy and, of course, mischief. He said something then, though the window blocked out every bit of sound, and pressed his much larger hand to the pane opposite to where Tony’s pressed.

Letters of green light began to write themselves across the glass in a beautiful, curving script, the same words that appeared on the gold ring in his head, the words that didn’t mean a damn thing because he didn’t read SpaceViking. Which is exactly what he told Loki.

The god shook his head in amused disgust, and this time his voice carried clearly, vibrating in the glass itself. _“Fjandinn hafi það, Tony, borga eftirtekt!”_

Those words appeared on the glass too, giving Tony a moment of, _Are some of those those things even letters?_ and, _How did you get that sound from that spelling?_

“I don’t speak fucking SpaceViking, Lok!” Tony yelled in return. “Wanna clear that up for me?”

“I said,” Loki’s voice murmured exactly in his ear, “That you need to pay attention, Tony.”

Tony jerked awake, mouth arid and foot throbbing.

Bruce sprawled face down on the mattress beside him with the covers kicked off, wearing black pj’s printed with a faintly glow-in-the-dark periodic table of the elements.

_Cute, Bruce_ , Tony thought, then remembered that he’d given them to Bruce as a kind of ScienceBros in-joke prezzie the previous Christmas.

In the corner where the comfy chair was sat the silhouette of a man-shaped mountain with wings coming out of its head.

“Hey, Thor,” Tony said. “This is unusual. Any reason you’re in my bedroom?”

Thor sounded surprised. “I awaited your awakening.”

“In my bedroom. With your helmet on.”

“In your chamber. Aye.”

Tony couldn’t help it. He laughed, but softly, so as not to wake Bruce.

“Do you know how to work the coffeemaker?”

The Thor-shaped shadow nodded.

“Then go make us a pot, okay? And help yourself to something to eat, if you’re hungry. I’ll meet you in the living room in a few.” Even in the dark, Tony could feel the god’s blank stare. “In a few minutes, Thor. I need to use the room of requirement.”

“Ah. Of course.” Thor rose to his feet. In ‘a few,’ then.” He left the room incredibly quietly for such a big guy, his cape making a weird ripply shadow behind him.

Tony shook his head and groped for his crutches, pocketing the pain pills before he left.

Written in crimson lipstick on the bathroom mirror, in what may well have been Natasha’s writing, were the words: _FYI - Nstar says Lokettes OK but miss you. SHIELD actively hunting them. Then, in all caps, GET L OUT. NOW._

Northstar. That was the name of the snickering French-Canadian eXie’s.

The all-caps sent a shudder up Tony’s spine. Except under dire circumstances, Nat wasn’t what he’d call an "all-caps" kind of person.

Useless to ask when Natasha had been in his bathroom, because the only conceivable answer would obviously be, "any time she fucking wanted to."

Tony relieved himself, because he needed to, badly, but the whole time he stared at that message, thinking of what Kurt had told him. _Try harder_. That wasn’t just a general warning, there was something worse up?

He didn’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D. for shit, but they wouldn’t actually hurt Loki, would they? Last time he’d been free to move around his fish bowl and snark with impunity. But that was then…

That highly dangerous Loki and this Loki were very different creatures. And the idiots in S.H.I.E.LD. were not above taking their pound of flesh. And the kids… Gods how he missed them. He kept wondering what they looked like now. Had they grown? Did they have any more amazing skills? Were Kurt and Logan able to keep them warm, fed, happy, not afraid on the run?

What was he saying? Kurt would take care of those things. Logan would keep them safe.

Except that was supposed to be _his_ job, and the whole thing made him crazy. Not being able to get to Loki made him crazier. That S.H.I.E.L.D. had the one and was stalking the others freaked the hell out of him.

And Thor was waiting.

Tony sighed. He was not so much loving his life at this moment.

He crutched his way to the living room couch and found Thor had not only brewed the coffee, he’d made the world’s largest plate of sandwiches (with the crusts cut off, no less), brought in a chilled 12-pack of microbrew ale and fired up the fireplace. Tony guessed he was going for that meadhall ambiance.

Thor had also removed his helmet and his armor. Tony would have been willing to bet that if he’d checked the closet he’d have found them there, probably with Mjolnir hung neatly above on a hook.

“This is cozy,” Tony said, but when Thor turned his face to him, he felt bad. The god looked wrecked, even worse than during the pop-tart-and-pickled-herring incident.

He supposed when he came down to it, Baldr was Thor’s biological brother, so of course he’d feel bad, Tony guessed, (not having siblings himself) but he just couldn’t manage to grit out so much as an, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Or even, “I’m sorry your nephew the giant wolf munched your big brother.” Which would not be appropriate under any circumstances. Or true.

Tony wasn’t the least bit sorry. Quite the opposite.

He did manage, finally, to get out, “I’m sorry, Thor. I know it’s rough.” There. That was nicely non-committal.

“Anthony, I cry help of you.” Thor picked up a sandwich and ate it in two bites. He was clearly a giant, physically-perfect, stress-eater.

Tony picked up a sandwich of his own, to keep Thor company and to cushion the pain pills. One bite and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Thor, bro, this is fucking delicious! How…?”

“The father of my Lady Jane has undertaken to teach unto me the manly art of cooking, and I find in myself a great love of the craft, more so than for all other endeavors, even battle. Do you believe my duties as an Avenger would allow me to assay culinary college as Lady Jane, who is also in admiration of my new-won skills, has suggested?”

_Considering you’re never fucking here anyway?_ Tony wanted to say, but didn’t. He found himself not wishing to give Thor a hard time. At the moment.

“You know,” he said instead, “I’d definitely bring that up with Cap. But what about the, you know, Prince of Asgard thing? What are your dad’s thoughts?”

“I care not!” Thor bellowed, then lowered his voice. “I care not. Loki made a finer king wearing Odin’s face than my father himself in these later days. Would that my heart no longer contained the least fragment of love for that false parent!” Thor looked like he wanted to jump up and stride around dramatically, but contented himself with half a dozen more sandwiches and a beer or three instead.

“Blinders have been removed from my eyes. I see how this so-called Allfather has played brother against brother throughout the long years of our lives. I recognize, too, his unending cruelty toward my Loki. I will no more to Asgard,” Thor said firmly. “May the self-regarding old spider sit alone on his throne and rot, I will never again bend to his will.”

“Fuck, Thor.” Tony stared at the giant golden being in front of him. “Just… fuck. So that’s your plan? Give up princing, go to culinary school and be an Avenger?"

“Aye, ‘tis the gist of it, Brother Anthony.” Thor nodded emphatically. “And I shall find my Loki and care for him ‘til he is well, for I sense that he is grievously injured, much of that injury inflicted by my own unwilling hands, by the auspices of that most-wicked-of-brothers, Baldr. When Loki is well, I shall wed my sweet Lady Jane, and soon after we shall make many children, and in the fullness of time will I open a place of enjoyable eating and name it for my dear lost brother Hodr. Is that not a better future than constant war, or the rule of a spoilt and petulant people?”

“Honestly, Thor?” Tony had to fight hard not to laugh. Thor Odinson, Norse God and Restaurateur: it was either an 80’s sitcom or the world’s weirdest reality show. Cake God? Valhalla’s Kitchen?

Preppest thou the _mise en place_! he imagined Thor shouting at his bewildered line crew.

The god gave another emphatic nod. “Indeed, I crave your honest opinion, Shield-Brother.”

“It actually does sound better than what your dad had planned for you. For damn sure it’s a hell of a lot more healthy for all concerned.”

“It has been given to me to reflect…” Thor began, then stopped to chomp a couple sandwiches in a thoughtful kind of way.

Tony made a note to himself to have J.A.R.V.I.S. increase the tower's food deliveries if the god of thunder really was going to be there on a regular basis.

“The Allspeak provides meanings for those things you Midgardians say, but I am not always certain the meanings are correct for such words. For example, to be called a vessel for the cleansing of ladyparts—though my Lady Jane assures me such an act is in no way necessary--in what way is that terrible, Shield-Brother? As ladyparts are lovely things, is my meaning. Lady Darcy called me by this word, and I do not believe she meant it kindly.”

Bruce had issued a stern warning about the pain pills, otherwise Tony would have been hitting the scotch like whoa. He wasn’t sure which was worse, hearing giant, virile, sex-god Thor primly say “ladyparts,” or the thought of having to explain to the god of thunder why “douchebag” was an insult. Because, okay, Thor did kind of have a point.

He decided to duck and run for the hills, figuratively speaking. “You know, that’s a really good question, Thor. Why don’t we ask Bruce in the morning when he wakes up?”

Thor nodded solemnly. “Our Shield-Brother Bruce Banner possesses great wisdom.”

Having polished off the last of the sandwiches, Thor looked down at the couch, tracing the weave of the upholstery with his huge, blunt fingertip. “Mummy was a weaver,” he said, “But I believe that all her patterns were magical in nature. Loki would read them to me at times, when Mummy wasn’t in hearing. He was always so clever, from the time he was quite small. I loved him terribly, but I was jealous of him also, for his quickness, his cleverness. He soon surpassed me at lessons, though I was years older, and I knew jealousy. I encouraged our arms-master… I encouraged my friends… I encouraged my friends to…” A single tear, bright as crystal, rolled down Thor’s cheek, he slumped over, curled in on himself, face buried in his hands.

“I said, always,” he sobbed, “Loki, mind your actions and your words, be of good deportment, obey Father, listen to him, it will not be so terrible for us then. Only listen. Pay attention, what he says, what he does, how he moves—is it with quickness or languidly? What is he watching, or whom? What do his words truly say beneath their outward meaning? Loki would not care. I could not make him care. He would be always in defiance, drawing the Allfather’s ire unto himself.”

Thor’s head was all the way in his lap by this time. He looked like he was having an earthquake.

Awkwardly, Tony scooted over closer, rubbing Thor’s back, those perfect muscles that were so hard they might have been carved from one of the ironwood trees in Creepy Forest.

When he looked up he saw that Bruce had come out and was watching too. After a second, Bruce sat down on the coffee table. He put one hand on Thor’s shoulder, squeezing gently, the other hand rested on the god’s long, golden hair.

“Thor,” Bruce said, “How does your Allspeak translate the word ‘hypervigilance?’”

Thor raised his face, sodden and blotchy in a way Tony had never seen it. He’d joked in the past that Thor had four expressions, but "anguished" had never before been one of them. And the best thing he knew how to do was hand the god a fistful of tissues. Some help.

Thor blew his nose on an epic scale. “To be alert on all sides, constantly, like a warrior,” he answered Bruce’s question. “It wears roughly on the spirit.”

“Children aren’t meant to live that way,” Bruce said. “No one is.”

Thor dried his eyes. “I would find my brother,” he said, in what for him was an extremely quiet voice. “I would not be a douchebag and betray him again. I love and need him, for himself, and as now he is the only family left to me.”

“I’ll make a couple calls,” Tony told him.

Thor continued to tremble.

“I can’t sleep anyway," Tony said, "But you should, Thor.  Why don’t you bed down in the guest room tonight? That way if you need anything, Bruce and I are nearby.”

_Meanwhile,_ he thought _, I’ll be in here, hating on your dad._

“C’mon, Thor, I’ll show you the way,” Bruce said. “Can I make you some warm milk to help you sleep?”

“With honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon?” Thor asked hopefully, like a big, sad kid.

_Yup, definitely hating on the Allfucker_ , Tony thought, weary at heart at the thought of the two brothers, two young gods, caught up in their dance of defiance and protectiveness and pain, year after year after year. He thought of Loki acting out, only to draw the anger of a monstrous god away from the brother he loved.

_I will get you out, babe_ , Tony thought. _I’ll get you out the moment I can._


	6. Loki Agonistes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki feels as if he's come to the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Agonistes"=a word used after a proper name to describe a person in the midst of a terrible struggle.
> 
> gaolers=jailers Loki's using the British spelling.

* * *

Loki knew he might be spied upon any moment of any day, and it would not do to seem nervous or agitated, no matter how much reason he might have to be so.

They would not reveal to him the hour of the assembly that had been called to decide his fate—reasonable enough, he supposed, as he possessed no timepiece to count the hours upon--only told him to be ready for whomever came to fetch him.

This decision only decided the whole of his fate, after all, why should he have a say in it? It lay within their plan for him, that he not be allowed control in any matter.

But that, Loki told himself, exemplified his old, proud thinking. He was not a prince anymore, as everyone was fond of reminding him, as if he needed the reminders. He felt too weary, now, really for either anger or for hate.

After the incident of the corridor and the closet, he had fallen into a heavy resignation in their place. He slept badly as always in the night, a recent feverishness and an unrelenting cough sending him careening between brief but intense bouts of nightmares from which he awoke drenched in sweat, and hours in which he could do nothing but huddle upright against the hard head of his bed whilst his chest seemed determined to tear itself asunder.

He rose when he could bear no more, showered in the lukewarm water his captors allowed him, then waited for his keepers to take him out to where he must exercise, as best he could, for the required period. This was to say he staggered along the four sides of the appointed area with one shoulder pressed to the wall to prevent himself from falling, dizzy from fever, still painfully weak from his blood-loss of the day of the scrubbing of the corridor, from hunger, pain, sleeplessness and, truth be told, more than anything else, perhaps, from loneliness and from grief.

The voices around him told him many things, so Loki supposed he could not actually count himself as alone, but those voices, phantom and otherwise, seemed universally so angry, and so hateful, and he seemed to have misplaced the ability, more than half the time, to understand the words as they spoke them.

An isolated sliver of his mind informed him that meant he was losing the Allspeak, which in turn meant that his thoughts were much disordered, and that he might also be very ill indeed—but what could he do in regards to any of those things?

Again, he considered, why should the loss of the Allspeak make a difference? He had spoken English at many times, and spoken it well, why should the words have fled from him now?

Except that he was dying. Could there be any different reason?

He was dying, he would die, here alone, a thrall of these heartless men and women.

Loki showered again, painfully, even the touch of water an agony on his skin, and dressed with great difficulty in his appointed clothes for the day, which were a plain, sleeveless singlet, underthings, and simple black trousers of a flimsy knitted material. He was not allowed shoes or stockings, and never had been exactly clear what dreadful thing he was meant to do with them.

His feet forever froze, even when wrapped tight in his thin blanket, even when the rest of him burned, and the chill artificial stone of the floor only made that worse. It drove Loki nearly to madness.

Loki ate the required portion of the food they brought, the least he could get away with, whilst his unspeaking keepers watched him, for failure to do any part of what they told him in the words he could seldom translate resulted in the return of the lightning, and the more lightning he received, the less he found himself able to remember.

He needed, badly, to remember. Only memory remained to him.

After, when the keepers left him alone, Loki retreated to the room of requirement to vomit the food up again. Sheer nerves and the dreadful muzzle device Doom and Baldr had used to force-feed him in Latveria had ruined his stomach entirely, it seemed, and even had it not, the keepers made no distinction between the foods he could and could not eat.

He was still leaning on the rim of the toilet, sweating and shivering, when the time came in which Kurt sent to him.

Loki began to weep, then, because the touch of someone who actually loved and cared for him was so essential, so missed. Even though Loki understood that the connection came to him from far, far in the distance, and thus remained too tenuous for Loki to discern actual words, Kurt enveloped him with his own kind presence, and at times these brief periods touched by his friend’s love were all that still connected him to his increasingly fragile hold on his own mind.

In no other way, also, could he mark the passage of time. He had tried to keep the count of days, but the lights burned always and with no way to observe the outer world, he had quickly become muddled in his numbering.

He almost missed his cell on Asgard then, where at least he had his books, his mother’s ephemeral visits and the antics of the other prisoners to observe. His body had been whole, too, and well-fed. He found himself weeping often. At times speaking aloud to himself, or arguing with the voices, though never with the more substantial voices of his captors.

He understood these brief visits to be draining for Kurt in the extreme, but had it not been for Kurt's touch…

Loki shuddered. He found more and more difficulty in marshaling his thoughts. He wanted to weep again when Kurt could no longer maintain the contact, bitterly and uncontrollably, but he would not allow himself to weep.

Instead he leaned back against the cold tile wall and forced himself to breathe slowly and carefully for a number of minutes, until his face could be made calm and still. He left the room just as he found it, scrubbed and clean. They liked to make him scrub things, and they liked best when he used his now-tenuous magic in place of his uncooperative hands, it weakened him so. Their lessons in humbleness continued unabated.

Loki did not mind. He found that he waxed nearly apathetic, caring for little except Kurt’s daily contact and the fading hope that he might someday be returned to his family.

The remainder consisted only of pain stacked atop more pain, for how could the new hurts injure him when the old remained such agony? He wondered once more (truly, for the thousandth time) if Tony had by now forgotten him entirely. Tony, so far as he knew, remained so near, yet never sent to him. He supposed he constituted only an unneeded complication the engineer, his brief love, did not need. Why should Tony, a king of sorts in this Realm, require such a spent thing as himself, when anything he desired could be his for mere asking?

Still, as he moved to the side of the bed, then sat as required during times of waiting, feet flat on the floor, hands folded in his lap, Loki could not help but think of Tony only a little—the Man of Iron’s warm brown eyes, his laugh, the touch of his rough-skinned, blunt-fingered hand, his witty words. He’d so honestly wanted Tony to love him truly, and been foolish in that wanting, as in all things. Had such foolishness alone been enough to finally undermine the very last of his belief in himself?

Loki supposed it had. Perhaps after all the great sufferings, one small consideration alone could be sufficient to destroy the whole.

Loki wished more than anything that his gaolers would come for him and be done with it. He cared not for the outcome, but he had run through the last of his day’s strength. Instead, they kept him waiting for what seemed hours. Only when he had drifted into a fitful upright doze did they arrive to jostle him into awareness and manhandle him into the thick leather belts that buckled round his neck and waist, the chains that fettered him before and behind, the heavy shackles to circle his ankles and wrists. The weight of it all, now, felt more than he could carry.

Again, his captors left him.

Once fettered, Loki thought of sitting on the bed once more as he was meant to, but he could not bear the drag of his chains, and even the very real threats of the lightning, or the Midgardian draughts they used to poison him at times were not enough make him shoulder the burden. They could do as they would, he no longer cared.

Lying on his side, trying not to cough or move, or even breathe too deeply, he fell a second time into a fretful sleep, and there dreamed of his daughter Hela. She had grown a little from when he had last seen her, and grown surpassingly in loveliness, with her vivid green eyes and black curling hair that fell nearly to her waist. She knelt by his bedside, full skirts pooling midnight round her legs, stroking his cheek with her small, black-gloved hand.

“Poor dearest _Pabbi_ ,” she said, in her soft, musical voice. “Has the time come so soon, my darling one, that I am called to you? Will you follow me now?”

Loki glanced across to where the blank grey wall had been and instead saw a door of great beauty, wondrously carved and rich with many colours.

Loki understood in that moment that this Hela was his daughter indeed, not merely a commonplace _Valkyrja_ , an ordinary chooser of the battle-slain, but also a related being of vaster power.

He wanted, with nearly all his heart, to abandon this place and this time, to follow where she led him--except that he knew, were he to accompany Hela upon this journey, she would not travel with him to end, perhaps would never come after, and he badly wanted to know her in this world, not that unknown _other._ He wished to see her laugh, and to dance, to see her grow to womanhood, perhaps love, perchance bear children of her own.  He wished to see her brothers grow to be men, and to know life's delight and sorrows, should those sorrows not weigh too heavy upon them.

And--may all the gods help him--he wished to see Tony, if only once, and for a moment. 

He could leave none of them.  Not yet.  He must be stronger.

“This is not now the time, Blesséd One,” Loki told her, a little regretfully, because to go would have been so very easy. “Another day, perhaps, dearest.”

Hela bent to kiss his cheek sweetly. “I am glad of that,” she said, her smile tender. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

Between one blink of the eye and the next, she disappeared, and within a few minutes more the beautiful door faded.

Loki dreamed no more dreams.


	7. Hearing and Seeing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S.H.I.E.L.D. holds a hearing to determine what will become of Loki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a flannel=the thing we in the U.S. generally call a washcloth, not the fabric pajamas are often made out of
> 
> The Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" features a boy who warns of a nonexistent wolf so many times that when an actual wolf comes no one will believe him. The moral of the story is not to make false claims, because when you do tell the truth, no one will believe you.
> 
>  _seiðmaður_ =a male practitioner of _seiðr_ magic
> 
>  _Bach, cariad, cariadon, hannwyl,_ etc. are all Welsh endearments (like dear or darling). _Mrawd_ means brother. I believe I translated all other Welsh within the text.
> 
> Myrddin's quote is from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's best-known poem (and also best-known example of the villanelle, a poetic form), " _Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night_ (1952), which the poet wrote for his dying father.

* * *

“Prisoner Laufeyson.” A hard hand closed on Loki’s shoulder, shaking him roughly awake. “Prisoner Laufeyson! on your feet. Now!”

Loki forced his eyes open a crack. They had sent the hairless one to fetch him, the cruelest of the Men of S.H.I.E.LD. Of what words this man had spoken, he understood his own name, but understood little nothing else of what the required of him.

He knew, however, that he had not waited properly, as the commandments required, although he had fully meant to, and had complied as best he could. His body’s failings were not of his own, deliberate, doing.

The agent touched his lighting-spear to Loki’s chains and the cold fire flashed through him, flinging him from the bed to the floor.  He flailed helplessly at the hairless man’s feet.

“Now that goes beyond kneeling, wouldn't you say?” said the Man of S.H.I.E.LD with cruel joy. “How does it feel, Prince Loki? You aren’t so royal now, are you?”

Loki understood, suddenly, that one word, "royal." Had the word been directed toward him? If so..."

“N-never. Never r-royal,” he mumbled into the tiled floor. “Never.”

“For gosh sake’s, what do you think you’re doing to that man?” came a voice from the doorway, in tone level and authoritative.

To Loki's surprise he found himself perfectly capable of interpreting this man's words, perhaps because, for the first time in weeks, he heard them duplicate within his mind.

“Step away, Agent. Come to think of it, you’re dismissed. I’ll take things from here.”

“Yes, sir, Captain Rogers. Only--just a thought--you might want to hose him down first if he’s pissed himself.” Loki's tormentor laughed  again. “They do that sometimes when we give ‘em enough juice with the shock stick.”

"Language," the new voice said tersely.

“N-not. Did not.” Burning with fever and shame, Loki pushed against the floor with one shoulder, trying to raise himself, a nearly impossible task with his hands chained behind, though he did manage to get his legs tucked up beneath him.

“Take it easy now. I’ll help you,” the Captain said, raising Loki easily to the bed. He swayed as he sat, and whatever Rogers said after could not penetrate his confusion.

Blessedly, a flannel, damp with cool water, moved over his face, plied by a gentle hand.  However soothing its touch might be, it could not distract Loki from the agony in his bound arms, back, shoulders, as if each muscle and bone he possessed had been lighted into so many flames beneath his skin.

A cup of water followed. Loki allowed the moisture to wet his lips, his tongue, but did not swallow.

“You’re sure you don’t want more than that? You look kind of dehydrated.”

“My stomach is… unpredictable.”

“I guess you’re pretty nervous, huh?” Captain Rogers said, kindly enough. “I suppose I would be too. But don’t worry, you’ll have representation. There’ll be people showing up to speak for you.”

Loki could not believe this words.  What fool would speak for him, Loki the Murderer?

Suddenly it struck him, as he might be struck by a hard blow in the pit of his stomach.  He knew the name Captain Rogers.  Capt. Rogers meant the Captain of America--no, Captain America, and Captain America must hate him as much as any.  Was this kindness, this concern, the driving off of his tormentor, intended only to lull him into a false sense of safety or trust?

“If I spoke for myself," Loki ventured cautiously, "None would listen.”

“Sadly, I think that might be true. You've made a lot of people awfully angry. Whatever happens, though, it’ll be better than this, okay?”

“Unchain me, Captain?" Loki could fathom, within his muddled mind, if he had meant these words as a test or as a plea. In all truth, he could not bear the pain, and the acuity of his mind had ebbed to the point where to attempt a test of anything would without doubt prove fruitless. "I pray you, please, unclasp these chains, for the weight of them has grown too great to be borne.”

Captain Rogers frowned at him. “I’m very sorry, Loki, but I’m afraid I know the story of the _Boy who Cried Wolf_. I wish it weren’t impossible for me to trust you at this time.”

“I know not your Crying Wolf Boy story,” Loki mumbled, forcing himself to sit straighter. He stared directly ahead, unwilling to let his chin drop, unwilling to acknowledge, even to himself, that this honorable Captain Rogers had as much as called him a coward and a liar to his face.

Loki wished then that he had not understood the Captain’s words. He climbed to his feet on his own and took the two paces to the door, glaring at the blank panel.

“Once I believed you to be, if not my friend, then at least my Shield-Brother,” he said brokenly.

“I believed in you too,” Rogers answered. “And I don't hold your trick on the riverbank against you.  There's a chance it was even meant kindly. But don’t you see, Loki, that was before New York. I thought you were a better man than you turned out to be.”

“New York,” Loki spat, bitterly. “Always New York! Had you Midgardian fools no eyes to see my agony? Had you witless Avengers no ears to hear my secret words? I told you, I showed you all, beneath the very eyes of my hated masters, yet you cretins discerned nothing.”

He fell against the door, panting, which could only lead to more harsh coughing, and the splatter of his red blood against the grey paint.

“I would go forth,” he said, when the spasms were controlled once more. “I would not tarry. Let your masters, and mine, decide.”

“Wait, you’re saying your mind was controlled? Just like Barton and Selvig?”

“I was the gentler driver, I assure you. Never did I seek to harm them. Thanos and The Other failed to be so kind. Yet still might I have resisted, if only I had escaped my long night’s fall into the abyss, when I sought to end my monstrous life. I did not know that madness twined round the roots of Yggdrasil, or that my being would not end as I wished it.” Loki rested his head against the cold metal door. “Or, that fell and dire beings awaited me in the darkness. Without the least resource, how could I be their equal?”

“They were the ones behind the attack? Why didn’t you say anything then, beyond hints?”

“Neither was the bond severed, nor control of my own thoughts returned, until your creature beat me. Then, promptly, was I muzzled. Here, again, I was muzzled. When, pray, was I meant to speak?” He forced himself to straighten again. “I would not tarry,” he repeated.

The Captain moved to take Loki’s arm, but he shrugged away.

“I would not be touched where there is no kindness. I shall walk unaided.” He held himself perfectly upright, head high, eyes forward, though it cost him all he had left to do so.

Captain America walked silently beside him, concern in every line of his being, all along the seemingly endless corridor, slowing his pace to conform to Loki’s dragging steps, stopping with his frequent, inevitable rests.

Just outside another uniformly grey, uniformly plain door, they stopped. “Loki, what do you think is going to happen here?”

“I believe that I shall die in this place, or another like it, as I did not in Germany long past. It matters not, Captain—though I would beg two boons of you.”

“And they are?”

“The first, that you, by your own honor, vouchsafe my children’s safety, for they are innocent, and of harm to no one. Let them not be hunted further, as they are hunted now, or used cruelly by any. Let them not be taken as captives by these Persons of S.H.I.E.L.D. and put to unworthy purposes.”

Rogers appeared discomfited. “And the second?”

“Tell…” Waves of sorrow and dizziness washed over him. “Tell your Shield-Brother Anthony that when I loved, always I loved truly. Never were incursions made upon his mind. I never did, and would not play him falsely. That the words I gave to him, in the language of my most secret heart, at our last parting, hold ever true for me. These they were, has he proved too dull to discern them, or has cared not: _'I place my heart into your hands, most beloved, the heart of my heart into your heart. Hold and keep me, now and ever, as ever I hold and keep you. By the blood my life, I swear to prove my truth_.' Pledge to me your remembrance of what I have said, Captain?”

The Captain spoke words to Loki in return, but he scarcely heard. Anger had depleted the last morsel of his strength and his head had filled with a noisy, hot humming, his eyes with flashes of brilliance. Despite the complete emptiness of his stomach, he feared he would be sick again before the assembled company, whosoever they might be.

Captain Rogers led him into the windowless, overheated room. Loki allowed himself to be locked into the hard, straight-backed chair. His head dropped back and he shut his eyes, infinitely tired.

“Loki.” That was Agent Coulson’s voice. “Pay attention, please.”

“Beg pardon.” Loki forced himself upright. He felt altogether at sea. His words seemed to drift slowly through his head, in rune-shapes, before his mouth could speak them. “Forgive… Too far… Too far…” He coughed deeply. His chest burned and ached. “Not to diminish proceedings.”

“Loki,” rumbled a deep voice from away to his right, the voice of a great blue blur.

Could it be the Midgardian Physician of Mutants, McCoy, whom Kurt had described to him?

“How have you been treated here? Obviously the food and conditions have been far from adequate. When did you last see a doctor?”

“My brother is terribly unwell,” said a different deep voice, one Loki knew as exactly as his own.

Loki could not help but shut his eyes again, so that he would not have to look upon Thor’s troubled face.

“He was grievously injured in the Country of Doom…”

“Otherwise known as Latveria,” said the voice of the plain man, Coulson, drily.

“Semantics aside, Director, your prisoner received severe injuries in the Latverian conflict. Has he, in fact, been provided with appropriate treatment for said injuries? I can hear from where I’m sitting that he may well have an advanced case of pneumonia. What care has he been given? Has he received any medical attention whatsoever?”

“I believe you’re attempting to muddy the waters, Dr. McCoy, since you’re fully aware that Loki possesses the accelerated healing of an Asgardian and would no doubt have been fully recovered within a matter of hours.”

“No,” Loki murmured. “Fen and I sought Baldr…”

“Our thrice-accursed brother,” Thor growled.

“The ray of von Doom’s devising. Hurt Fen. Hurt… Destroyed me. Destroyed me. My Fen?”

“Your son is quite well, Loki,” McCoy told him kindly. “We’ll talk about him as soon as we can. Meanwhile, Director Coulson, your answer to everything can’t be ‘Asgardian healing.’ Any sensible person would realize that if a healing factor was actually at play, your prisoner wouldn’t be seriously ill, as he clearly is. One precludes the other.”

“Sweet Fen.” Loki began to weep, just knowing his sweetling fared better than he. His mind seemed to have gone to another place. It lived with his dear son.

“Sweet Fen. Can’t care for…” Loki raised his bleary eyes to the place where he thought Coulson’s voice might have come from. “Impossible to feed a monster, yes? Impossible?”

“Is that how you describe yourself, Loki?” Coulson asked.

“Once-father said. He said. Not prideful. Not. Forgive please, words are floating.”

“You say your once-father. By that you mean Odin Allfather, Ruler of Asgard?”

“Director Coulson, your prisoner is clearly far too ill to be interrogated at this time. Despite the medieval chains holding him upright, he can scarcely sit. He can barely speak. He may not even know what he’s saying.”

“I’m not interrogating Loki, Dr. McCoy, merely asking him a few questions. He’s been extremely reticent during his time with us.”

“I put emeralds in the corridor where you would have me clean,” Loki said. “Did you find them?” He held up his twisted hands. “I could not scrub. I was broken.”

“These are the liberties you take with a prince of Asgard?” Thor growled.

“Not a prince, brother… here I learn humiliation. No. No. Humility. The way of the spirit broken.”

Loki remembered the right words suddenly, amidst all the misshapen ones. “'Your birthright was to die,’ Odin Allfather said. I tried. I tried again, as when I was young and flew from the airship. My fall from the Bifrost was to be my good death, but only the dark, Lord Thanos, The Other and the Chitauri awaited to ruin me. I belong to none, and none wants me, all my life has been lies.”

“No, brother.” Thor sounded as close to weeping as Loki had heard in many years. “Loki, my sweet Loki, who saved me from the dungeons of Doom and a cruel brother’s lies, _ekki gefast upp líkamanum við myrkrið milli heima_.”

 _Do not give up your body to the darkness between worlds_ , Thor said. Did his brother not see that this had already occurred?

 _“Thor, kærust, ég get ekki lifað eins og ég hef verið að lifa. Þú wiill vera hamingjusamari eftir, þú munt sjá,_ ” Loki replied, as kindly toward he-who-had-been-his-brother as he could. Those words came easily, without thought. Despite what Thor said, he wanted only that darkness, no Valhalla for such as he, and no grey Hel, only nothing. He felt numbed, all that old anger, that old resentment, strangely without point.

 _Thor, dearest_ , he had said, _I cannot live as I have been living. You will be happier after, you will see._

Kurt would care for his children so lovingly, just as he had thought, and Logan protect them. They would grow with the mutant younglings as their fellows and none would despise their differences. Above all other considerations, he himself would never be given opportunity to unwillingly corrupt and ruin them, as he had corrupted and ruined himself.

Tony, it seemed once again, did not care. Wise Tony, to think better of this madness.

“Loki,” Agent Coulson said, in his mild, uninflected voice, “I suppose it remains to ask you, what it is you hope to gain from this meeting?”

“A swift death,” Loki answered simply. “My parts divided and burned, after, as one must with a _seiðmaður_.”

“No, oh-my-brother,” Thor breathed, rushing forward. He knelt at Loki’s feet, clutching bruisingly hard at Loki’s chained hands. “All now know you were not responsible, all now know you fought your captors in body and mind. All now know how much greater the damage might have been.”

“It matters not, Thor. Damage was yet done under my charge. No other to blame, and Agent Coulson harmed…” Loki narrowed his eyes, attempting to see the marks of the agent’s death upon him, but his _seiðr_ and the resources of his body had been so depleted that he only achieved a brief blurring of his ordinary vision, followed by a rush of red and a hot gush from his nose.

“My brother! My brother!” Thor cried, cradling Loki’s head between his hands. “Loose his bonds! Loose his bonds, you minions of S.H.I.E.L.D.!”

But the minions of S.H.I.E.L.D. did not loose his bonds, only argued and quarreled around him, most thinking this was only another trick he played (despite what they’d seen in the janitor’s closet) with Thor his unwitting dupe.

Why, in the end, should It matter what they thought, or what they said?

Loki looked out and saw the night sky as it appeared over Asgard, that great swirling indigo field alight with thrice a million stars of all the colors that were, brighter than any jewels could be. The loneliness of it overwhelmed him, and Loki knew then, once and for all, that Asgard was not his home, and never had been, though Frigga had been his mother and Thor his brother, in that they had loved him, in the best way given to them.

What more could they do, than love him as best they were able, as his dearest Kurt had taught him?

Loki knew, though, that he never was, and never would be Loki Odinson, neither would he be Loki Laufeyson, for all the ice in his veins. He could only be of the frost and not of the frost, Loki of the blue skin and Loki of the white, for whatever small number of days remained to him.

He shut his eyes, unmindful of Agent Coulson, whom he could not see at any rate, dizzied by the realization.

 

“My poor _hanwylion_ , my proud _ddraig wen_ , what have they done to you?” said a voice he had once loved better than any other, and, oh, but it was sweet to once again be called “beloved” and “white dragon” in Myrddin’s beautiful Welsh tongue, to feel the ends of Myrddin’s crisp, straight inky hair tickle his face as his dearest bent over him.

“Do you know how I have ached for you, _cariadon_ , my lover?” Loki answered. He stood, he realized, in the kitchen of their London flat, and a great fish—a salmon, he thought—lay on the worktop before him. He’d cut himself in the cleaning of it, but instead of healing instantly, as in his true memory of this day, his blood flowed and flowed, bright against the white porcelain of the basin.

“How I have missed you, _fy un gwyllt_ , my wild one?” he cried. “I have known only loneliness since you left me, Myrddin.”

“But you have discovered a new love now, have you not, sweet god of mischief, _duw o ddrygioni_? Does he bring to you no laughter? Is he not tender as springtime with you?”

“I fear he mislikes the trouble I bring him, and abandons me in the here-that-is-not-here, where the cold-hearted Persons of S.H.I.E.L.D. torment me.”

“Oh, Loki. Loki, _bach_. Perhaps he does not. Never surrender your life so easily, _cariad_. Where is that clever wit of yours, and that silver tongue? What of your _plant gwyrthiol_ , your miraculous children?”

Myrddin held him tightly, as he often had, so tightly it hurt him, murmuring in his ear, “We are wild men, you and I, and what is it the poet of my country wrote, Loki?”

 _Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,_  
_And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,_  
_Do not go gentle into that good night._

“Do not go, _cariadon_.” Myrddin's eyes sparkled at him, bright as rubies, behind their wire-rimmed spectacles. Naturally, he did not weep. Demons, and the sons-of-demons, make no tears. “Do not let these small mortals push you, however weary you may be.”

“ _Bach_ ,” Loki said, “They will never release me. They consider me too dangerous.”

“Then perhaps… Grinning, with his light-elf’s face and his crimson eyes and his dimples, Myrddin slipped the signet ring from his own left hand and on to Loki’s equally slender finger. “An appeal to Queen and Country is in order, _ie_? To the _Societatum Aeturni_? Even, if that does not convince, a visit from the Minister?”

Myrddin laughed merrily. “Oh, yes, my _hannwyl_ , I believe a visit from the Minister is very much necessitated. Who shall arrange it, do you think? Not sweet _mrawd_ Thor. Was he hit overfrequently on the head with a mallet as a child? The blue one perhaps, the doctor? He frowns beautifully, and seems designed to be taken seriously, despite his might pelt. I imagine, being _fwtaniadau_ , a mutant as they say, his heart burns naturally hot with anger and resentment. Oh, yes, Loki _bach_ , I believe he will suit your cause nicely. I shall speak with him presently.”

Loki sought to reach for his hand, but it was as smoke. “Stay with me, stay with me, my _ddraig  goch_ , my red dragon.”

"Would that I could, _ddraig wen_ ,” answered Myrddin’s distant voice.


	8. Just Following Orders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony crashes Phil Coulson's office. Phil receives a less-than-pleasant call from the mysterious "Minister."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from the legal defense variously known as "Superior Orders," the "Nuremberg Defense," "Lawful Orders," or _Befehl ist Befehl_ ("an order is an order"). It's a plea in a court of law that argues that members of the military, police, firefighters, and certain civilians should be either held not guilty, or only guilty of a lesser charge, if the crimes they commit are the result of a direct order from a superior.
> 
> "Secret Agent Man" was a 1966 hit by Johnny Rivers, from his album _...And I Know You Wanna Dance_.

* * *

“So, what you’re telling me,” Tony said, hardly recognizing his own voice (though he had to admit it sounded kind of like his dad's at Howard's most managerial), because he'd reached just that perfect mix of disgust, disbelief, and rage. “Is that you’re comfortable holding a perfectly harmless individual, whose health has suffered immeasurably under your care, without edible food or medical attention, on an indefinite basis, without any sort of actual trial or hearing?”

He leaned forward in his chair, invading the Director’s desk space, nailing him with a patented Tony Stark glare. “Because those are your fucking orders? Holy Hell, Phil! Want to explain how any of that’s Homeland Security and not torture followed up by murder aforethought? That’s the part I don’t get. Some people—not me, natch—might even construe your treatment of Loki as personal retribution.”

“And when he’s no longer perfectly harmless, Tony?" Phil countered. "When you’ve taken him home, given him the best of care, rehabilitated him, as you say--what happens then?”

“What happens to anyone? He can’t do magic without practically bleeding to death. He has three kids to take care of, one of them with special needs after that fucking nightmare in Latveria. I assume Loki will find a job of some sort, find a way of getting involved in the community, maybe pick up a college degree along the way. He’s a very bright, artistic guy, I’m sure he’ll land on his feet and find something he excels in, when and if he’s feeling better again. His kids are everything to him. He’s not going to do anything to jeopardize their futures.”

“About those kids…” the Director began.

“They’re just kids, Phil. A little funny-looking, but kids.”

“But the one, the wolf boy…”

“Doom fried the poor kid. He can’t brush his teeth or go to the bathroom on his own. He can’t use a spoon. The closest he comes to feeding himself is using a sippy cup or picking up Cheerios off a flat surface.” Tony felt a squirmy, depressed guilt talking about Fen that way—but he needed to make his point.

The Director attempted something like a scoff, in his pleasant, innocuous Phil Coulson way. “And Loki’s going to be dealing with that? Really?”

“Well, not in his leather armor or anything, but he’s fantastic with those kids. He broke down his own fucking _organs_ , to make into milk for them when we were locked up. His _organs_ , Phil. It’s probably half the reason he can’t eat now. I’d imagine he’s making up for his supremely shitty childhood with his own babies.”

“Oh, Lord,” Coulson groaned, “Not that old story! He’s 'misunderstood.' He didn’t have 'proper parenting.' Guess what? We still all have to be responsible for our actions. That’s how the world works. You know that, Tony--or you damn well should.”

“And when a dude known as Thanos the Mad Titan, Destroyer of Fucking Minds, tortures you for a solid year, you’ll be 100% responsible for your actions, too, right? You let Barton and Selvig off the hook, why not Loki? Because he’s an alien? That’ll send a spiffy message when we want other aliens to be our actual allies. Prince Thor of Asgard is already Not Pleased in the extreme.”

“Tony...” Coulson began, but just then his Super-Secret S.H.I.E.L.D. cellphone buzzed.

Phil's mobile wasn’t a StarkPhone, Tony found himself interested to note. Did Director seriously think using some other firm's inferior product would keep his Super Slimy S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets Super Secret?  That Tony wouldn't be able to hack the hell out of them? As if he already couldn’t, or wouldn't, undertake exactly that little project the first chance he got?  Tony mentally moved that particular item up to the tippy-top of his "to do" list.

If he hadn’t been completely pissed at his so-called buddy-slash-frenemy-slash-teammate's boyfriend, Tony would have been semi-amused to discover that Phil's the ring-tone happened to be “ _Secret Agent Man_.”

“I have to take this,” Director said.

Tony waved a hand. “Feel free.”

He ended up _actually_ amused to hear that Phil’s side of the conversation consisted mainly of the words, “Yes, Minister, but…” spoken in an increasingly harried tone, while Tony formed in his (admittedly juvenile) mind an image of Minister Butt, looking like a character from _South Park_ or _Family Guy_.

When he hung up, Director put his actual head in his actual hands. “It seems I’m getting my ass handed to me in…” He glanced at the time on his phone. “Oh, looky, about five minutes now.”

He speed-dialed someone, saying in as sour a voice as Phil Coulson could possibly manage to produce, “Yes, bring him down. No, no restraints after the lobby—what’s the point? He’s the proverbial bug up the Avengers’ behinds after that. Well, just disconnect him, then. Again, no longer our concern.”

He glanced up at Tony. “It also seems you’ll be getting your way, but as soon as he's on his feet I want a twice weekly check-in, I want a million hours of community service, I want employment within six months and if anyone of Midgard, as your alien friend would say, gets so much as a hangnail from the guy, it’s prison, either here or Asgard, I’m not picky. You and Thor are responsible for him. Not the other Avengers. You. So god help you if he steps over the line. The British Minister isn’t the only one capable of ass-handing, you know.”

“I love you too, Director,” Tony said. “How about the kids?”

“Routine surveillance only, that good enough for you? And again, any trouble, we’re involved. Instantly. No BS. Now if you would please kindly fuck off, Tony?” Phil requested, sounding actually pretty damn close to exasperated.

“Fuck off to where, may I ask?” Tony inquired politely.

“To the lobby waiting area. Now. Sit down. Shut up. We’ll deliver Loki as soon as he’s processed.”

“And how long will that be? To let my driver know, you understand.”

“Half an hour, maybe? Just go.” Phil delivered the mildest and most pleasant glare imaginable.

Somehow, it was chilling.

Tony had to wonder, sometimes, if (in the style of his predecessor, Nick Fury) mild-mannered-looking Phil had ruined lives, personally ordered executions, and acquired tons of info on American citizens without a vestige of legal process or permission.  Did they let you be Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., without that kind of experience under your belt?

The subject tended, Tony thought, To give one pause.


	9. Always

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With The Minister's intervention, Loki finally gains his freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother" Hollies Sing Hollies_ ) was a hit for British pop band The Hollies all the way back in 1966.

* * *

The new S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters lobby struck Tony as sleek, modern and, well, _almost_ completely built, though traces of its incompleteness lingered in occasional sheets of translucent plastic held up by blue duct tape, hiding areas still being worked on and showing, also, that things weren’t quite so finished as first impressions might indicate.

At Tony's request, Happy parked the car right out front, leaving a placard in the front window saying this particular parking job was totally allowed by permission of the Director, and that by no means were they terrorists or Hydra agents.

Of course, _had_ they been Hydra agents (or even terrorist) they could probably easily have faked an identical placard, claiming the exact same things, with their advanced laser printer of evil. It was the thought, though, that counted.

After he left the car, crossed the street to hit a nearby deli for supplies, bringing back with him a giant bag of subs, chips and sodas, only saying, as explanation, “Ya still gotta eat,” which was true.

They all (Tony, Pep, Natasha and Cap, in this instance) picked at their food morosely. Clint, who Tony hadn’t even known was in attendance, swooped down to score his lunch, then returned to his perch in the shiny steel rafters.

Tony drank a Diet Coke and picked off all the banana peppers from his sandwich. His stomach hurt from tension, which probably wasn’t helped significantly by either the soda or the spicy-sour peppers.

At the hour mark Thor appeared from upstairs, looking literally like thunder. After pacing furiously back and forth across the lobby a couple times, cloak flying in a breeze no one else could feel, he plunked his massive self down on a minimalist black-vinyl sofa between the two women (slightly bending the metal frame), then reached across, took Tony’s now-depeppered sandwich without a word, and devoured it in three bites.

Tony passed the Norse god his chips.

“Salt and vinegar with cracked pepper, my favorite! I thank you, Shield-Brother!” Thor exclaimed delightedly, then burst into violent tears, using his cape the way other people used Kleenex.

“I said that I would carry my brother,” he sobbed. “I said that I would. He is no burden to me. I would always go back when the others abandoned him on the field, whenever I remembered. Never was he a burden.”

Tony had a flashback, to the tune of that Golden Oldie “ _He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother_ ,” of Loki joking, sometime during their sojurn in the ironwood forest, and with a slight spice of bitterness, of the number of times he’d fallen on some foreign field of battle, and Thor and his friends had simply forgotten to collect him.

Forty-seven times, he’d told Tony. Being Loki, he’d kept an accurate count.

“They say he must walk from this place,” Thor sobbed between chip-crunches.

Tony started to be half-afraid he’d choke himself, and it hit him, as he’d snarked before, that maybe Thor really was some kind of compulsive stress-eater. Maybe, too, the reason he could drink even Tony right under the table, wasn’t so much his godly tolerance, as it was that he had 1400-plus years’ worth of scary shit to forget.

“It is too far, it is too far, he is too weak,” Thor insisted. “I like not this foolish Midgardian bureaucracy!” His voice dropped suddenly low, and in that moment he wasn’t goofy, sunny Thor, he was a furious and ancient god of thunder and war, one of the reasons, a millennium past, that half the world pissed itself in fear when they heard the news, “The Vikings are coming!”

Tony, phone already in hand, speed-dialed Clint. “Katniss, for reals, tell your boyfriend to get off his perky butt and produce Thor’s brother before Prince Thunder God Mjolnirates the pitiful remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. He’s moving quickly through antsy and well on his way to Berserker rage. His eyes are literally turning red as I watch.”

“Got it.” Clint disappeared into a duct. Because obviously it would be too much to ask that he rappel down to floor level in front of the elevator banks and ride one upstairs like a normal person.

Sure enough, though, in about ten minutes Clint reappeared at the back of a phalanx of grim-faced S.H.I.E.L.Dies.

At the head of the cheerful little group strode a tall man--a Thor-level tall man--whose excellent charcoal gray suit might as well have been sewn from a British flag, it screamed, “ _Made in Britain Just for Very Important ME!!!_ ” so loudly. He had the look of a guy who was less than pleased that he’d been forced to suffer through a transcontinental flight at the bequest of the bloody colonials. The enormous stick up his butt had apparently been inserted at birth and his air of supercilious condescension made Loki himself look like Mr. Rogers by comparison. He didn’t so much dismiss the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as waft them aside with a lazy flap of his giant, well-manicured hands.

They seemed dazed, powerless to resist, which left Loki alone in their suddenly-parted midst.

Tony heard a low growl from Thor’s direction, and he totally took the thunder god’s point. For one thing, they had Loki loaded down with more Victorian-looking chains than Marley’s ghost. For another he was obviously an uneasy combination of completely physically wrecked and higher than a kite on an ocean beach in a windstorm.

Tony could only guess that, to get him to this point, they’d shot Loki up on a potent cocktail of something like morphine and speed. Tony could actually see his heartbeat throbbing frantically beneath his thin cotton tank top.

Without even realizing what he was doing, Tony found himself on his feet and running.

The next thing he knew he had Loki in his arms, holding him probably ten times tighter than was necessary, or kind. He just couldn’t help himself.

Loki’s head dropped onto Tony’s shoulder, his tight hug now the only thing that kept the broken god on his feet as he mumbled a few hard-won words of SpaceViking into Tony’s ear, “ _Þér elskaðir, þú komst til mín eftir allt_.”

Tony almost got that one, even before Thor spoke for his brother.

“Beloved, you came for me after all,” the thunder god translated, voice cracking.

“I did,” Tony answered, “I always will. Always, Loki. Always.”

 

 

To be continued in _Long Ago, and in Another Country_


End file.
